REAL  SOLDIERS 
OF    FORTUNE 


Burnham  and  Commissioner  Armstrong  escaping  alter  shooting  the 
High-Priest  Umlimo 


REAL  SOLDIERS 


OF  FORTUNE 


BY 

RICHARD   HARDING   DAVIS 


ILLUSTRATED 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
NEW  YORK::::::::::::::::::::::i9n 


COPYRIGHT,  1906,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


CONTENTS 

nun 

MAJOR-GENERAL    HENRY    RONALD    DOUGLAS 

MAC!VER i 

BARON  JAMES  HARDEN-HICKEY 33 

WINSTON  SPENCER  CHURCHILL 75 

CAPTAIN  PHILO  NORTON  McGiFFiN    ....  119 

GENERAL  WILLIAM  WALKER,  THE  KING  OF  THE 

FILIBUSTERS 145 

MAJOR  BURNHAM,  CHIEF  OF  SCOUTS  ....  189 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Burnham  and  Commissioner  Armstrong  escaping  after 

shooting  the  High-Priest  Umlimo  .     .     .    Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

Major-General  Henry  Ronald  Douglas  Maclver  as  he 
is  to-day 24 

Baron  Harden-Hickey,  King  James  I.  of  Trinidad    .       48 

Winston  Churchill  in  the  uniform  of  Lieutenant  of 

South  African  Light  Horse 96 

McGiffin  as  Superintendent  of   the  Chinese  Naval 

College,  at  the  age  of  thirty-two 128 

Commander  McGiffin  in  hospital  after  the  Battle  of 
the  Yalu,  showing  damage  to  clothes  due  to  con- 
cussion   142 

General  William  Walker 160 

Major  F.  R.  Burnham — taken  on  the  day  the  King 

decorated  him  with  the  D.  S.  0 224 


MAJOR-GENERAL    HENRY 

RONALD    DOUGLAS 

MACIVER 


MAJOR-GENERAL   HENRY   RONALD 
DOUGLAS   MACIVER 


A^Y  sunny  afternoon,  on  Fifth  Avenue,  or  at 
night  in  the  table  d'hote  restaurants  of  Uni- 
versity Place,  you  may  meet  the  soldier  of  fortune 
who  of  all  his  brothers  in  arms  now  living  is  the 
most  remarkable.  You  may  have  noticed  him;  a 
stiffly  erect,  distinguished-looking  man,  with  gray 
hair,  an  imperial  of  the  fashion  of  Louis  Napoleon, 
fierce  blue  eyes,  and  across  his  forehead  a  sabre 
cut. 

This  is  Henry  Ronald  Douglas  Maclver,  for 
some  time  in  India  an  ensign  in  the  Sepoy  mutiny; 
in  Italy,  lieutenant  under  Garibaldi;  in  Spain, 
captain  under  Don  Carlos;  in  our  Civil  War, 
major  in  the  Confederate  army;  in  Mexico,  lieu- 
tenant-colonel under  the  Emperor  Maximilian; 
colonel  under  Napoleon  III,  inspector  of  cavalry 
for  the  Khedive  of  Egypt,  and  chief  of  cavalry  and 
general  of  brigade  of  the  army  of  King  Milan  of 
Servia.  These  are  only  a  few  of  his  military  titles. 
In  1884  was  published  a  book  giving  the  story  of 
his  life  up  to  that  year.  It  was  called  "Under 

3 


Major-General  Maclver 

Fourteen  Flags."  If  to-day  General  Maclver 
were  to  reprint  the  book,  it  would  be  called  "Under 
Eighteen  Flags." 

Maclver  was  born  on  Christmas  Day,  1841, 
at  sea,  a  league  off  the  shore  of  Virginia.  His 
mother  was  Miss  Anna  Douglas  of  that  State; 
Ronald  Maclver,  his  father,  was  a  Scot,  a  Ross- 
shire  gentleman,  a  younger  son  of  the  chief  of  the 
Clan  Maclver.  Until  he  was  ten  years  old  young 
Maclver  played  in  Virginia  at  the  home  of  his 
father.  Then,  in  order  that  he  might  be  educated, 
he  was  shipped  to  Edinburgh  to  an  uncle,  Gen- 
eral Donald  Graham.  After  five  years  his  uncle 
obtained  for  him  a  commission  as  ensign  in  the 
Honorable  East  India  Company,  and  at  sixteen, 
when  other  boys  are  preparing  for  college,  Mac- 
lver was  in  the  Indian  Mutiny,  fighting,  not  for  a 
flag,  nor  a  country,  but  as  one  fights  a  wild  animal, 
for  his  life.  He  was  wounded  in  the  arm,  and, 
with  a  sword,  cut  over  the  head.  As  a  safeguard 
against  the  sun  the  boy  had  placed  inside  his  hel- 
met a  wet  towel.  This  saved  him  to  fight  another 
day,  but  even  with  that  protection  the  sword  sank 
through  the  helmet,  the  towel,  and  into  the  skull. 
To-day  you  can  see  the  scar.  He  was  left  in  the 
road  for  dead,  and  even  after  his  wounds  had 
healed,  was  six  weeks  in  the  hospital. 

4 


Major-General  Maclver 

This  rough  handling  at  the  very  start  might  have 
satisfied  some  men,  but  in  the  very  next  war 
Maclver  was  a  volunteer  and  wore  the  red  shirt  of 
Garibaldi.  He  remained  at  the  front  throughout 
that  campaign,  and  until  within  a  few  years  there 
has  been  no  campaign  of  consequence  in  which  he 
has  not  taken  part.  He  served  in  the  Ten  Years' 
War  in  Cuba,  in  Brazil,  in  Argentina,  in  Crete,  in 
Greece',  twice  in  Spain  in  Carlist  revolutions,  in 
Bosnia,  and  for  four  years  in  our  Civil  War  under 
Generals  Jackson  and  Stuart  around  Richmond. 
In  this  great  war  he  was  four  times  wounded. 

It  was  after  the  surrender  of  the  Confederate 
army,  that,  with  other  Southern  officers,  he  served 
under  Maximilian  in  Mexico;  in  Egypt,  and  in 
France.  Whenever  in  any  part  of  the  world  there 
was  fighting,  or  the  rumor  of  fighting,  the  proced- 
ure of  the  general  invariably  was  the  same.  He 
would  order  himself  to  instantly  depart  for  the 
front,  and  on  arriving  there  would  offer  to  organ- 
ize a  foreign  legion.  The  command  of  this  or- 
ganization always  was  given  to  him.  But  the  for- 
eign legion  was  merely  the  entering  wedge.  He 
would  soon  show  that  he  was  fitted  for  a  better 
command  than  a  band  of  undisciplined  volun- 
teers, and  would  receive  a  commission  in  the  regu- 
lar army.  In  almost  every  command  in  which  he 

5 


Major-General  Maclver 

served  that  is  the  manner  in  which  promotion 
came.  Sometimes  he  saw  but  little  fighting, 
sometimes  he  should  have  died  several  deaths, 
each  of  a  nature  more  unpleasant  than  the  others. 
For  in  war  the  obvious  danger  of  a  bullet  is  but  a 
three  hundred  to  one  shot,  while  in  the  pack 
against  the  combatant  the  jokers  are  innumer- 
able. And  in  the  career  of  the  general  the  un- 
foreseen adventures  are  the  most  interesting.  A 
man  who  in  eighteen  campaigns  has  played  his  part 
would  seem  to  have  earned  exemption  from  any 
other  risks,  but  often  it  was  outside  the  battle-field 
that  Maclver  encountered  the  greatest  danger. 
He  fought  several  duels,  in  two  of  which  he  killed 
his  adversary;  several  attempts  were  made  to 
assassinate  him,  and  while  on  his  way  to  Mexico 
he  was  captured  by  hostile  Indians.  On  returning 
from  an  expedition  in  Cuba  he  was  cast  adrift  in 
an  open  boat  and  for  days  was  without  food. 

Long  before  I  met  General  Maclver  I  had 
read  his  book  and  had  heard  of  him  from  many 
men  who  had  met  him  in  many  different  lands 
while  engaged  in  as  many  different  undertakings. 
Several  of  the  older  war  correspondents  knew  him 
intimately;  Bennett  Burleigh  of  the  Telegraph 
was  his  friend,  and  E.  F.  Knight  of  the  Times  was 
one  of  those  who  volunteered  for  a  filibustering 

6 


Major-General  Maclver 

expedition  which  Maclver  organized  against  New 
Guinea.  The  late  Colonel  Ochiltree  of  Texas  told 
me  tales  of  Maclver's  bravery,  when  as  young 
men  they  were  fellow  officers  in  the  Southern 
army,  and  Stephen  Bonsai  had  met  him  when 
Maclver  was  United  States  Consul  at  Denia  in 
Spain.  When  Mclver  arrived  at  this  post,  the 
ex-consul  refused  to  vacate  the  Consulate,  and 
Maclver  wished  to  settle  the  difficulty  with  duel- 
ling pistols.  As  Denia  is  a  small  place,  the  inhabi- 
tants feared  for  their  safety,  and  Bonsai,  who  was 
our  charge  d'affaires  then,  was  sent  from  Madrid 
to  adjust  matters.  Without  bloodshed  he  got  rid 
of  the  ex-consul,  and  later  Maclver  so  endeared 
himself  to  the  Denians  that  they  begged  the  State 
Department  to  retain  him  in  that  place  for  the 
remainder  of  his  life. 

Before  General  Maclver  was  appointed  to  a 
high  position  at  the  St.  Louis  Fair,  I  saw  much  of 
him  in  New  York.  His  room  was  in  a  side  street 
in  an  old-fashioned  boarding-house,  and  over- 
looked his  neighbor's  back  yard  and  a  typical 
New  York  City  sumac  tree;  but  when  the  general 
talked  one  forgot  he  was  within  a  block  of  the 
Elevated,  and  roamed  over  all  the  world.  On  his 
bed  he  would  spread  out  wonderful  parchments, 
with  strange,  heathenish  inscriptions,  with  great 

7 


Major-General  Maclver 

seals,  with  faded  ribbons.  These  were  signed  by 
Sultans,  Secretaries  of  War,  Emperors,  filibusters. 
They  were  military  commissions,  titles  of  nobility, 
brevets  for  decorations,  instructions  and  com- 
mands from  superior  officers.  Translated  the 
phrases  ran:  "Imposing  special  confidence  in," 
"we  appoint,"  or  "create,"  or  "declare,"  or 
"  In  recognition  of  services  rendered  to  our  person," 
or  "country,"  or  "cause,"  or  "For  bravery  on  the 
field  of  battle  we  bestow  the  Cross 

As  must  a  soldier,  the  general  travels  "light," 
and  all  his  worldly  possessions  were  crowded 
ready  for  mobilization  into  a  small  compass.  He 
had  his  sword,  his  field  blanket,  his  trunk,  and  the 
tin  despatch  boxes  that  held  his  papers.  From 
these,  like  a  conjurer,  he  would  draw  souvenirs  of 
all  the  world.  From  the  embrace  of  faded  letters, 
he  would  unfold  old  photographs,  daguerrotypes, 
and  miniatures  of  fair  women  and  adventurous 
men:  women  who  now  are  queens  in  exile,  men 
who,  lifted  on  waves  of  absinthe,  still,  across  a  cafe 
table,  tell  how  they  will  win  back  a  crown. 

Once  in  a  written  document  the  general  did  me 
the  honor  to  appoint  me  his  literary  executor,  but 
as  he  is  young,  and  as  healthy  as  myself,  it  never 
may  be  my  lot  to  perform  such  an  unwelcome  duty. 
And  to-day  all  one  can  write  of  him  is  what  the 

8 


Major-General  Maclver 

world  can  read  in  "Under  Fourteen  Flags,"  and 
some  of  the  "foot-notes  to  history'*  which  I  have 
copied  from  his  scrap-book.  This  scrap-book  is 
a  wonderful  volume,  but  owing  to  "political" 
and  other  reasons,  for  the  present,  of  the  many 
clippings  from  newspapers  it  contains  there  are 
only  a  few  I  am  at  liberty  to  print.  And  from 
them  it  is  difficult  to  make  a  choice.  To  sketch 
in  a  few  thousand  words  a  career  that  had 
developed  under  Eighteen  Flags  is  in  its  very 
wealth  embarrassing. 

Here  is  one  story,  as  told  by  the  scrap-book,  of 
an  expedition  that  failed.  That  it  failed  was  due 
to  a  British  Cabinet  Minister;  for  had  Lord  Derby 
possessed  the  imagination  of  the  Soldier  of  Fort- 
une, his  Majesty's  dominions  might  now  be  the 
richer  by  many  thousands  of  square  miles  and 
many  thousands  of  black  subjects. 

On  October  29,  1883,  the  following  appeared 
in  the  London  Standard:  "The  New  Guinea  Ex- 
ploration and  Colonization  Company  is  already 
chartered,  and  the  first  expedition  expects  to  leave 
before  Christmas."  "The  prospectus  states  settlers 
intending  to  join  the  first  party  must  contribute 
one  hundred  pounds  toward  the  company.  This 
subscription  will  include  all  expenses  for  passage 
money.  Six  months'  provisions  will  be  provided, 

9 


Major-General  Maclver 

together  with  tents  and  arms  for  protection.  Each 
subscriber  of  one  hundred  pounds  is  to  obtain  a 
certificate  entitling  him  to  one  thousand  acres." 

The  view  of  the  colonization  scheme  taken  by  the 
Times  of  London,  of  the  same  date,  is  less  com- 
plaisant. "The  latest  commercial  sensation  is  a 
proposed  company  for  the  seizure  of  New  Guinea. 
Certain  adventurous  gentlemen  are  looking  out  for 
one  hundred  others  who  have  money  and  a  taste  for 
buccaneering.  When  the  company  has  been  com- 
pleted, its  share-holders  are  to  place  themselves 
under  military  regulations,  sail  in  a  body  for  New 
Guinea,  and  without  asking  anybody's  leave, 
seize  upon  the  island  and  at  once,  in  some  unspeci- 
fied way,  proceed  to  realize  large  profits.  If  the 
idea  does  not  suggest  comparisons  with  the  large 
designs  of  Sir  Francis  Drake,  it  is  at  least  not  un- 
worthy of  Captain  Kidd." 

When  we  remember  the  manner  in  which  some 
of  the  colonies  of  Great  Britain  were  acquired,  the 
Times  seems  almost  squeamish. 

In  a  Melbourne  paper,  June,  1884,  is  the  fol- 
lowing paragraph: 

"Toward  the  latter  part  of  1883  the  Government 
of  Queensland  planted  the  flag  of  Great  Britain 
on  the  shores  of  New  Guinea.  When  the  news 
reached  England  it  created  a  sensation.  The  Earl 

10 


Major-General  Maclver 

of  Derby,  Secretary  for  the  Colonies,  refused,  how- 
ever, to  sanction  the  annexation  of  New  Guinea, 
and  in  so  doing  acted  contrary  to  the  sincere  wish 
of  every  right-thinking  Anglo-Saxon  under  the 
Southern  Cross. 

"While  the  subsequent  correspondence  between 
the  Home  and  Queensland  governments  was  go- 
ing on,  Brigadier-General  H.  R.  Maclver  origi- 
nated and  organized  the  New  Guinea  Explora- 
tion and  Colonization  Company  in  London,  with 
a  view  to  establishing  settlements  on  the  island. 
The  company,  presided  over  by  General  Beresford 
of  the  British  Army,  and  having  an  eminently 
representative  and  influential  board  of  directors, 
had  a  capital  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
pounds,  and  placed  the  supreme  command  of  the 
expedition  in  the  hands  of  General  Maclver. 
Notwithstanding  the  character  of  the  gentlemen 
composing  the  board  of  directors,  and  the  truly 
peaceful  nature  of  the  expedition,  his  Lordship 
informed  General  Maclver  that  in  the  event  of  the 
latter' s  attempting  to  land  on  New  Guinea,  in- 
structions would  be  sent  to  the  officer  in  command 
of  her  Majesty's  fleet  in  the  Western  Pacific  to  fir  j 
upon  the  company's  vessel.  This  meant  that  the 
expedition  would  be  dealt  with  as  a  filibustering 
one/' 

In  Judy,  September  21,  1887,  appears: 

"We  all  recollect  the  treatment  received  by 
Brigadier-General  Macl.  in  the  action  he  took 

ii 


Major-General  Maclver 

with  respect  to  the  annexation  of  New  Guinea. 
The  General,  who  is  a  sort  of  Pizarro,  with  a  dash 
of  D'Artagnan,  was  treated  in  a  most  scurvy 
manner  by  Lord  Derby.  Had  Maclver  not  been 
thwarted  in  his  enterprise,  the  whole  of  New 
Guinea  would  now  have  been  under  the  British 
flag,  and  we  should  not  be  cheek-by-jowl  with  the 
Germans,  as  we  are  in  too  many  places." 

Society,  September  3,  1887,  says: 

"The  New  Guinea  expedition  proved  abortive, 
owing  to  the  blundering  shortsightedness  of  the 
then  Government,  for  which  Lord  Derby  was 
chiefly  responsible,  but  what  little  foothold  we 
possess  in  New  Guinea,  is  certainly  due  to  General 
Maclver' s  gallant  effort." 

Copy  of  statement  made  by  J.  Rintoul  Mitchell, 
June  2,  1887: 

"About  the  latter  and  of  the  year  1883,  when 
I  was  editor-in-chief  of  the  Englishman  in  Cal- 
cutta, I  was  told  by  Captain  de  Deaux,  assistant 
secretary  in  the  Foreign  Office  of  the  Indian  Gov- 
ernment, that  he  had  received  a  telegram  from 
Lord  Derby  to  the  effect  that  if  General  Maclver 
ventured  to  land  upon  the  coast  of  New  Guinea 
it  would  become  the  duty  of  Lord  Ripon,  Viceroy, 
to  use  the  naval  forces  at  his  command  for  the  pur- 
pose of  deporting  General  Macl.  Sir  Aucland 

12 


Major-General  Maclver 

Calvin  can  certify  to  this,  as  it  was  discussed  in 
the  Viceregal  Council." 

Just  after  our  Civil  War  Maclver  was  interested 
in  another  expedition  which  also  failed.  Its 
members  called  themselves  the  Knights  of  Arabia, 
and  their  object  was  to  colonize  an  island  much 
nearer  to  our  shores  than  New  Guinea.  Mac- 
lver, saying  that  his  oath  prevented,  would  never 
tell  me  which  island  this  was,  but  the  reader  can 
choose  from  among  Cuba,  Haiti,  and  the  Hawaiian 
group.  To  have  taken  Cuba,  the  "colonizers" 
would  have  had  to  fight  not  only  Spain,  but  the 
Cubans  themselves,  on  whose  side  they  were  soon 
fighting  in  the  Ten  Years'  War;  so  Cuba  may  be 
eliminated.  And  as  the  expedition  was  to  sail 
from  the  Atlantic  side,  and  not  from  San  Fran- 
cisco, the  island  would  appear  to  be  the  Black 
Republic.  From  the  records  of  the  times  it  would 
seem  that  the  greater  number  of  the  Knights  of 
Arabia  were  veterans  of  the  Confederate  army, 
and  there  is  no  question  but  that  they  intended  to 
subjugate  the  blacks  of  Haiti  and  form  a  republic 
for  white  men  in  which  slavery  would  be  recog- 
nized. As  one  of  the  leaders  of  this  filibustering 
expedition,  Maclver  was  arrested  by  General 
Phil  Sheridan  and  for  a  short  time  cast  into  jail. 

13 


Major-General  Maclver 

This  chafed  the  general's  spirit,  but  he  argued 
philosophically  that  imprisonment  for  filibuster- 
ing, while  irksome,  brought  with  it  no  reproach. 
And,  indeed,  sometimes  the  only  difference  between 
a  filibuster  and  a  government  lies  in  the  fact  that 
the  government  fights  the  gun-boats  of  only  the 
enemy  while  a  filibuster  must  dodge  the  boats  of 
the  enemy  and  those  of  his  own  countrymen. 
When  the  United  States  went  to  war  with  Spain 
there  were  many  men  in  jail  as  filibusters,  for 
doing  that  which  at  the  time  the  country  secretly 
approved,  and  later  imitated.  And  because  they 
attempted  exactly  the  same  thing  for  which  Dr. 
Jameson  was  imprisoned  in  Holloway  Jail,  two 
hundred  thousand  of  his  countrymen  are  now 
wearing  medals. 

The  by-laws  of  the  Knights  of  Arabia  leave  but 
little  doubt  as  to  its  object. 

By-law  No.  II  reads: 

"We,  as  Knights  of  Arabia,  pledge  ourselves  to 
aid,  comfort,  and  protect  all  Knights  of  Arabia, 
especially  those  who  are  wounded  in  obtaining  our 
grand  object. 

"Ill — Great  care  must  be  taken  that  no  un- 
believer or  outsider  shall  gain  any  insight  into  the 
mysteries  or  secrets  of  the  Order. 

"IV — The  candidate  will  have  to  pay  one  hun- 
14 


Major-General  Maclver 

dred  dollars  cash  to  the  Captain  of  the  Company, 
and  the  candidate  will  receive  from  the  Secretary 
a  Knight  of  Arabia  bond  for  one  hundred  dollars 
in  gold,  with  ten  per  cent  interest,  payable  ninety 

days  after  the  recognition  of  (The  Republic  of ) 

by  the  United  States,  or  any  government. 

"V — All  Knights  of  Arabia  will  be  entitled  to 
one  hundred  acres  of  land,  location  of  said  land  to 
be  drawn  for  by  lottery.  The  products  are  coffee, 
sugar,  tobacco,  and  cotton/' 

A  local  correspondent  of  the  New  York  Herald 
writes  of  the  arrest  of  Maclver  as  follows : 

"When  Maclver  will  be  tried  is  at  present  un- 
known, as  his  case  has  assumed  a  complicated 
aspect.  He  claims  British  protection  as  a  subject 
of  her  British  Majesty,  and  the  English  Consul  has 
forwarded  a  statement  of  his  case  to  Sir  Frederick 
Bruce  at  Washington,  accompanied  by  a  copy  of  the 
by-laws.  General  Sheridan  also  has  forwarded  a 
statement  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  accompanied 
not  only  by  the  by-laws,  but  very  important  docu- 
ments, including  letters  from  Jefferson  Davis,  Ben- 
jamin, the  Secretary  of  State  of  the  Confederate 
States,  and  other  personages  prominent  in  the 
Rebellion,  showing  that  Maclver  enjoyed  the 
highest  confidence  of  the  Confederacy." 

As  to  the  last  statement,  an  open  letter  I  found  in 
his  scrap-book  is  an  excellent  proof.  It  is  as  follows : 

15 


Major-General  Maclver 

"To  officers  and  members  of  all  camps  of 
United  Confederate  Veterans:  It  affords  me  the 
greatest  pleasure  to  say  that  the  bearer  of  this 
letter,  General  Henry  Ronald  Maclver,  was  an 
officer  of  great  gallantry  in  the  Confederate  Army, 
serving  on  the  staff  at  various  times  of  General 
Stonewall  Jackson,  J.  E.  B.  Stuart,  and  E.  Kirby 
Smith,  and  that  his  official  record  is  one  of  which 
any  man  may  be  proud. 

"Respectfully,  MARCUS  J.  WRIGHT, 

"Agent  for  the  Collection  of  Confederate  Records. 

"War  Records  Office,  War  Department,  Washington,  July 
8,  1895." 

At  the  close  of  the  war  duels  between  officers 
of  the  two  armies  were  not  infrequent.  In  the 
scrap-book  there  is  the  account  of  one  of  these 
affairs  sent  from  Vicksburg  to  a  Northern  paper 
by  a  correspondent  who  was  an  eye-witness  of  the 
event.  It  tells  how  Major  Maclver,  accom- 
panied by  Major  Gillespie,  met,  just  outside  of 
Vicksburg,  Captain  Tomlin  of  Vermont,  of  the 
United  States  Artillery  Volunteers.  The  duel  was 
with  swords.  Maclver  ran  Tomlin  through  the 
body.  The  correspondent  writes: 

"The  Confederate  officer  wiped  his  sword  on 
his  handkerchief.  In  a  few  seconds  Captain  Tom- 
lin expired.  One  of  Major  Maclver' s  seconds 

16 


Major-General  Maclver 

called  to  him:  'He  is  dead;  you  must  go.  These 
gentlemen  will  look  after  the  body  of  their 
friend/  A  negro  boy  brought  up  the  horses,  but 
before  mounting  Maclver  said  to  Captain  Tom- 
lin's  seconds:  'My  friends  are  in  haste  for  me  to 
go.  Is  there  anything  I  can  do  ?  I  hope  you  con- 
sider that  this  matter  has  been  settled  honorably  ?' 
"There  being  no  reply,  the  Confederates  rode 
away." 

In  a  newspaper  of  to-day  so  matter-of-fact  an 
acceptance  of  an  event  so  tragic  would  make  strange 
reading. 

From  the  South  Maclver  crossed  through  Texas 
to  join  the  Royalist  army  under  the  Emperor  Maxi- 
milian. It  was  while  making  his  way,  with  other 
Confederate  officers,  from  Galveston  to  El  Paso, 
that  Maclver  was  captured  by  the  Indians.  He 
was  not  ill-treated  by  them,  but  for  three  months 
was  a  prisoner,  until  one  night,  the  Indians  having 
camped  near  the  Rio  Grande,  he  escaped  into 
Mexico.  There  he  offered  his  sword  to  the  Roy- 
alist commander,  General  Mejia,  who  placed  him 
on  his  staff,  and  showed  him  some  few  skirmishes. 
At  Monterey  Maclver  saw  big  fighting,  and  for 
his  share  in  it  received  the  title  of  Count,  and  the 
order  of  Guadaloupe.  In  June,  contrary  to  all 
rules  of  civilized  war,  Maximilian  was  executed 

17 


Major-General  Maclver 

and  the  empire  was  at  an  end.  Maclver  escaped 
to  the  coast,  and  from  Tampico  took  a  sailing 
vessel  to  Rio  de  Janeiro.  Two  months  later  he 
was  wearing  the  uniform  of  another  emperor, 
Dom  Pedro,  and,  with  the  rank  of  lieutenant- 
colonel,  was  in  command  of  the  Foreign  Legion 
of  the  armies  of  Brazil  and  Argentina,  which  at 
that  time  as  allies  were  fighting  against  Para- 
guay. 

Maclver  soon  recruited  seven  hundred  men, 
but  only  half  of  these  ever  reached  the  front.  In 
Buenos  Ayres  cholera  broke  out  and  thirty  thou- 
sand people  died,  among  the  number  about  half 
the  Legion.  Maclver  was  among  those  who  suf- 
fered, and  before  he  recovered  was  six  weeks  in 
hospital.  During  that  period,  under  a  junior  offi- 
cer, the  Foreign  Legion  was  sent  to  the  front,  where 
it  was  disbanded. 

On  his  return  to  Glasgow,  Maclver  foregathered 
with  an  old  friend,  Bennett  Burleigh,  whom  he 
had  known  when  Burleigh  was  a  lieutenant  in  the 
navy  of  the  Confederate  States.  Although  to- 
day known  as  a  distinguished  war  correspondent, 
in  those  days  Burleigh  was  something  of  a  soldier 
of  fortune  himself,  and  was  organizing  an  expedi- 
tion to  assist  the  Cretan  insurgents  against  the 
Turks.  Between  the  two  men  it  was  arranged 

18 


Major-General  Maclver 

that  Maclver  should  precede  the  expedition  to 
Crete  and  prepare  for  its  arrival.  The  Cretans 
received  him  gladly,  and  from  the  provisional  gov- 
ernment he  received  a  commission  in  which  he 
was  given  "full  power  to  make  war  on  land  and 
sea  against  the  enemies  of  Crete,  and  particularly 
against  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  and  the  Turkish 
forces,  and  to  burn,  destroy,  or  capture  any  vessel 
bearing  the  Turkish  flag." 

This  permission  to  destroy  the  Turkish  navy 
single-handed  strikes  one  as  more  than  generous, 
for  the  Cretans  had  no  navy,  and  before  one  could 
begin  the  destruction  of  a  Turkish  gun-boat  it  was 
first  necessary  to  catch  it  and  tie  it  to  a  wharf. 

At  the  close  of  the  Cretan  insurrection  Maclver 
crossed  to  Athens  and  served  against  the  brigands 
in  Kisissia  on  the  borders  of  Albania  and  Thessaly 
as  volunteer  aide  to  Colonel  Corroneus,  who  had 
been  commander-in-chief  of  the  Cretans  against 
the  Turks.  Maclver  spent  three  months  potting 
at  brigands,  and  for  his  services  in  the  mountains 
was  recommended  for  the  highest  Greek  deco- 
ration. 

From  Greece  it  was  only  a  step  to  New  York, 
and  almost  immediately  Maclver  appears  as  one 
of  the  Goicouria-Christo  expedition  to  Cuba,  of 
which  Goicouria  was  commander-in-chief,  and 

19 


Major-General  Maclver 

two  famous  American  officers,  Brigadier-General 
Samuel  C.  Williams  was  a  general  and  Colonel 
Wright  Schumburg  was  chief  of  staff. 

In  the  scrap-book  I  find  "General  Order  No.  II 
of  the  Liberal  Army  of  the  Republic  of  Cuba, 
issued  at  Cedar  Keys,  October  3,  1869."  In  it 
Colonel  Maclver  is  spoken  of  as  in  charge  of 
officers  not  attached  to  any  organized  corps  of 
the  division.  And  again: 

"General  Order  No.  V,  Expeditionary  Division, 
Republic  of  Cuba,  on  board  Lilian"  announces 
that  the  place  to  which  the  expedition  is  bound  has 
been  changed,  and  that  General  Wright  Schum- 
burg, who  now  is  in  command,  orders  "all  officers 
not  otherwise  commissioned  to  join  Colonel  Mac- 
Iver's  *  Corps  of  Officers/" 

The  Lilian  ran  out  of  coal,  and  to  obtain  fire- 
wood put  in  at  Cedar  Keys.  For  two  weeks  the 
patriots  cut  wood  and  drilled  upon  the  beach, 
when  they  were  captured  by  a  British  gun-boat 
and  taken  to  Nassau.  There  they  were  set  at 
liberty,  but  their  arms,  boat,  and  stores  were 
confiscated. 

In  a  sailing  vessel  Maclver  finally  reached 
Cuba,  and  under  Goicouria,  who  had  made  a  suc- 
cessful landing,  saw  some  "help  yourself"  fighting. 
Goicouria's  force  was  finally  scattered,  and  Mac- 
ao 


Major-General  Maclver 

Iver  escaped  from  the  Spanish  soldiery  only  by 
putting  to  sea  in  an  open  boat,  in  which  he  en- 
deavored to  make  Jamaica. 

On  the  third  day  out  he  was  picked  up  by  a 
steamer  and  again  landed  at  Nassau,  from  which 
place  he  returned  to  New  York. 

At  that  time  in  this  city  there  was  a  very  inter- 
esting man  named  Thaddeus  P.  Mott,  who  had 
been  an  officer  in  our  army  and  later  had  entered 
the  service  of  Ismail  Pasha.  By  the  Khedive  he 
had  been  appointed  a  general  of  division  and  had 
received  permission  to  reorganize  the  Egyptian 
army. 

His  object  in  coming  to  New  York  was  to  engage 
officers  for  that  service.  He  came  at  an  oppor- 
tune moment.  At  that  time  the  city  was  filled 
with  men  who,  in  the  Rebellion,  on  one  side  or  the 
other,  had  held  command,  and  many  of  these,  un- 
fitted by  four  years  of  soldiering  for  any  other 
calling,  readily  accepted  the  commissions  which 
Mott  had  authority  to  offer.  New  York  was  not 
large  enough  to  keep  Maclver  and  Mott  long 
apart,  and  they  soon  came  to  an  understanding. 
The  agreement  drawn  up  between  them  is  a  curi- 
ous document.  It  is  written  in  a  neat  hand  on 
sheets  of  foolscap  tied  together  like  a  Commence- 
ment-day address,  with  blue  ribbon.  In  it  Mac- 


Major-General  Maclver 

Iver  agrees  to  serve  as  colonel  of  cavalry  in  the 
service  of  the  Khedive.  With  a  few  legal  phrases 
omitted,  the  document  reads  as  follows: 

"  Agreement  entered  into  this  24th  day  of  March, 
1870,  between  the  Government  of  his  Royal  High- 
ness and  the  Khedive  of  Egypt,  represented  by 
General  Thaddeus  P.  Mott  of  the  first  part,  and 
H.  R.  H.  Maclver  of  New  York  City. 

"The  party  of  the  second  part,  being  desirous  of 
entering  into  the  service  of  party  of  the  first  part, 
in  the  military  capacity  of  a  colonel  of  cavalry, 
promises  to  serve  and  obey  party  of  the  first  part 
faithfully  and  truly  in  his  military  capacity  during 
the  space  of  five  years  from  this  date;  that  the 
party  of  the  second  part  waives  all  claims  of  protec- 
tion usually  afforded  to  Americans  by  consular  and 
diplomatic  agents  of  the  United  States,  and  ex- 
pressly obligates  himself  to  be  subject  to  the  orders 
of  the  party  of  the  first  part,  and  to  make,  wage,  and 
vigorously  prosecute  war  against  any  and  all  the 
enemies  of  party  of  the  first  part;  that  the  party  of 
the  second  part  will  not  under  any  event  be  gov- 
erned, controlled  by,  or  submit  to,  any  order,  law, 
mandate,  or  proclamation  issued  by  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  of  America,  forbidding 
party  of  the  second  part  to  serve  party  of  the  first 
part  to  make  war  according  to  any  of  the  pro- 
visions herein  contained,  /'/  being,  however,  dis- 
tinctly understood  that  nothing  herein  contained 
shall  be  construed  as  obligating  party  of  the  second 

22 


Major-General  Maclver 

part  to  bear  arms  or  wage  war  against  the  United 
States  of  America. 

"  Party  of  the  first  part  promises  to  furnish  party 
of  the  second  part  with  horses,  rations,  and  pay 
him  for  his  services  the  same  salary  now  paid  to 
colonels  of  cavalry  in  United  States  army,  and 
will  furnish  him  quarters  suitable  to  his  rank  in 
army.  Also  promises,  in  the  case  of  illness  caused 
by  climate,  that  said  party  may  resign  his  office 
and  shall  receive  his  expenses  to  America  and  two 
months*  pay;  that  he  receives  one-fifth  of  his 
regular  pay  during  his  active  service,  together  with 
all  expenses  of  every  nature  attending  such  enter- 
prise." 

It  also  stipulates  as  to  what  sums  shall  be  paid 
his  family  or  children  in  case  of  his  death. 
To  this  Maclver  signs  this  oath: 

"  In  the  presence  of  the  ever-living  God,  I  swear 
that  I  will  in  all  things  honestly,  faithfully,  and 
truly  keep,  observe,  and  perform  the  obligations 
and  promises  above  enumerated,  and  endeavor  to 
conform  to  the  wishes  and  desires  of  the  Govern- 
ment of  his  Royal  Highness,  the  Khedive  of  Egypt, 
in  all  things  connected  with  the  furtherance  of  his 
prosperity,  and  the  maintenance  of  his  throne." 

On  arriving  at  Cairo,  Maclver  was  appointed 
inspector-general  of  cavalry,  and  furnished  with  a 

23 


Major-General  Maclver 

uniform,  of  which  this  is  a  description:  "It  con- 
sisted of  a  blue  tunic  with  gold  spangles,  embroid- 
ered in  gold  up  the  sleeves  and  front,  neat-fitting 
red  trousers,  and  high  patent-leather  boots,  while 
the  inevitable  fez  completed  the  gay  costume." 

The  climate  of  Cairo  did  not  agree  with  Mac- 
lver, and,  in  spite  of  his  "gay  costume,"  after  six 
months  he  left  the  Egyptian  service.  His  hon- 
orable discharge  was  signed  by  Stone  Bey,  who, 
in  the  favor  of  the  Khedive,  had  supplanted  Gen- 
eral Mott. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that,  in  spite  of  his  ill  health, 
immediately  after  leaving  Cairo,  Maclver  was 
sufficiently  recovered  to  at  once  plunge  into  the 
Franco-Prussian  War.  At  the  battle  of  Orleans, 
while  on  the  staff  of  General  Chanzy,  he  was 
wounded.  In  this  war  his  rank  was  that  of  a 
colonel  of  cavalry  of  the  auxiliary  army. 

His  next  venture  was  in  the  Carlist  uprising  of 
1873,  when  he  formed  a  Carlist  League,  and  on 
several  occasions  acted  as  bearer  of  important 
messages  from  the  "King,"  as  Don  Carlos  was 
called,  to  the  sympathizers  with  his  cause  in  France 
and  England. 

Maclver  was  promised,  if  he  carried  out  success- 
fully a  certain  mission  upon  which  he  was  sent, 
and  if  Don  Carlos  became  king,  that  he  would  be 


Major-General  Henry  Ronald  Douglas  Maclver  as 
Is  To-day. 


Major-General  Maclver 

made  a  marquis.  As  Don  Carlos  is  still  a  pre- 
tender, Maclver  is  still  a  general. 

Although  in  disposing  of  his  sword  Maclver 
never  allowed  his  personal  predilections  to  weigh 
with  him,  he  always  treated  himself  to  a  hearty 
dislike  of  the  Turks,  and  we  next  find  him  fighting 
against  them  in  Herzegovina  with  the  Monte- 
negrins. And  when  the  Servians  declared  war 
against  the  same  people,  Maclver  returned  to 
London  to  organize  a  cavalry  brigade  to  fight  with 
the  Servian  army. 

Of  this  brigade  and  of  the  rapid  rise  of  Mac- 
lver to  highest  rank  and  honors  in  Servia,  the 
scrap-book  is  most  eloquent.  The  cavalry  brigade 
was  to  be  called  the  Knights  of  the  Red  Cross. 

In  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Hour,  the  gen- 
eral himself  speaks  of  it  in  the  following  terms: 

"  It  may  be  interesting  to  many  of  your  readers 
to  learn  that  a  select  corps  of  gentlemen  is  at  pres- 
ent in  course  of  organization  under  the  above  title 
with  the  mission  of  proceeding  to  the  Levant  to  take 
measures  in  case  of  emergency  for  the  defense  of 
the  Christian  population,  and  more  especially  of 
British  subjects  who  are  to  a  great  extent  unpro- 
vided with  adequate  means  of  protection  from  the 
religious  furies  of  the  Mussulmans.  The  lives 
of  Christian  women  and  children  are  in  hourly 
peril  from  fanatical  hordes.  The  Knights  will  be 

25 


Major-General  Maclver 

carefully  chosen  and  kept  within  strict  military 
control,  and  will  be  under  command  of  a  practical 
soldier  with  large  experience  of  the  Eastern  coun- 
tries. Templars  and  all  other  crusaders  are  in- 
vited to  give  aid  and  sympathy." 

Apparently  Maclver  was  not  successful  in  en- 
listing many  Knights,  for  a  war  correspondent  at 
the  capital  of  Servia,  waiting  for  the  war  to  begin, 
writes  as  follows: 

"A  Scotch  soldier  of  fortune,  Henry  Maclver,  a 
colonel  by  rank,  has  arrived  at  Belgrade  with  a 
small  contingent  of  military  adventurers.  Five 
weeks  ago  I  met  him  in  Fleet  Street,  London,  and 
had  some  talk  about  his  'expedition.'  He  had 
received  a  commission  from  the  Prince  of  Servia 
to  organize  and  command  an  independent  cavalry 
brigade,  and  he  then  was  busily  enrolling  his  vol- 
unteers into  a  body  styled  'The  Knights  of  the  Red 
Cross/  I  am  afraid  some  of  his  bold  crusaders 
have  earned  more  distinction  for  their  attacks  on 
Fleet  Street  bars  than  they  are  likely  to  earn  on 
Servian  battle-fields,  but  then  I  must  not  antici- 
pate history/' 

Another  paper  tells  that  at  the  end  of  the  first 
week  of  his  service  as  a  Servian  officer,  Maclver 
had  enlisted  ninety  men,  but  that  they  were  scat- 
tered about  the  town,  many  without  shelter  and 
rations: 

26 


Major-General  Maclver 

"He  assembled  his  men  on  the  Rialto,  and 
in  spite  of  official  expostulation,  the  men  were 
marched  up  to  the  Minister's  four  abreast — and 
they  marched  fairly  well,  making  a  good  show. 
The  War  Minister  was  taken  by  storm,  and  at  once 
granted  everything.  It  has  raised  the  English 
colonel's  popularity  with  his  men  to  fever  heat." 

This  from  the  Times,  London: 

"Our  Belgrade  correspondent  telegraphs  last 
night: 

'There  is  here  at  present  a  gentleman  named 
Maclver.  He  came  from  England  to  offer  him- 
self and  his  sword  to  the  Servians.  The  Servian 
Minister  of  War  gave  him  a  colonel's  commission. 
This  morning  I  saw  him  drilling  about  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  remarkably  fine-looking  fellows, 
all  clad  in  a  good  serviceable  cavalry  uniform,  and 
he  has  horses."3 

Later  we  find  that: 

"Colonel  Maclver's  Legion  of  Cavalry,  organ- 
izing here,  now  numbers  over  two  hundred  men." 

And  again: 

"  Prince  Nica,  a  Roumanian  cousin  of  the  Prin- 
cess Natalie  of  Servia,  has  joined  Colonel  Mac- 
lver's cavalry  corps." 

27 


Major-General  Maclver 

Later,  in  the  Court  Journal,  October  28,  1876, 
we  read: 

"  Colonel  Maclver,  who  a  few  years  ago  was  very 
well  known  in  military  circles  in  Dublin,  now  is 
making  his  mark  with  the  Servian  army.  In  the 
war  against  the  Turks,  he  commands  about  one 
thousand  Russo-Servian  cavalry." 

He  was  next  to  receive  the  following  honors: 

"Colonel  Maclver  has  been  appointed  com- 
mander of  the  cavalry  of  the  Servian  armies  on  the 
Morava  and  Timok,  and  has  received  the  Cross  of 
the  Takovo  Order  from  General  Tchernaieff  for 
gallant  conduct  in  the  field,  and  the  gold  medal 
for  valor." 

Later  we  learn  from  the  Daily  News: 

"Mr.  Lewis  Farley,  Secretary  of  the  *  League  in 
Aid  of  Christians  of  Turkey/  has  received  the  fol- 
lowing letter,  dated  Belgrade,  October  10,  1876: 

'DEAR  SIR:  In  reference  to  the  embroidered 
banner  so  kindly  worked  by  an  English  lady  and 
forwarded  by  the  League  to  Colonel  Maclver,  I 
have  great  pleasure  in  conveying  to  you  the  follow- 
ing particulars.  On  Sunday  morning,  the  flag 
having  been  previously  consecrated  by  the  arch- 
bishop, was  conducted  by  a  guard  of  honor  to  the 
palace,  and  Colonel  Maclver,  in  the  presence  of 

28 


Major-General  Maclver 

Prince  Milan  and  a  numerous  suite,  in  the  name 
and  on  behalf  of  yourself  and  the  fair  donor,  de- 
livered it  into  the  hands  of  the  Princess  Natalie. 
The  gallant  Colonel  wore  upon  this  occasion  his 
full  uniform  as  brigade  commander  and  chief  of 
cavalry  of  the  Servian  army,  and  bore  upon  his 
breast  the  'Gold  Cross  of  Takovo'  which  he  re- 
ceived after  the  battles  of  the  28th  and  3Oth  of 
September,  in  recognition  of  the  heroism  and 
bravery  he  displayed  upon  these  eventful  days. 
The  beauty  of  the  decoration  was  enhanced  by  the 
circumstances  of  its  bestowal,  for  on  the  evening 
of  the  battle  of  the  3oth,  General  Tchernaieff 
approached  Colonel  Maclver,  and,  unclasping  the 
cross  from  his  own  breast,  placed  it  upon  that 
of  the  Colonel. 

"'(Signed)     HUGH  JACKSON, 
"'Member  of  Council  of  the  League." 


In  Servia  and  in  the  Servian  army  Maclver 
reached  what  as  yet  is  the  highest  point  of  his 
career,  and  of  his  life  the  happiest  period. 

He  was  general  de  brigade,  which  is  not  what  we 
know  as  a  brigade  general,  but  is  one  who  com- 
mands a  division,  a  major-general.  He  was  a 
great  favorite  both  at  the  palace  and  with  the 
people,  the  pay  was  good,  fighting  plentiful,  and 
Belgrade  gay  and  amusing.  Of  all  the  places  he 
has  visited  and  the  countries  he  has  served,  it  is  of 

29 


Major-General  Maclver 

this  Balkan  kingdom  that  the  general  seems  to 
speak  most  fondly  and  with  the  greatest  feeling. 
Of  Queen  Natalie  he  was  and  is  a  most  loyal  and 
chivalric  admirer,  and  was  ever  ready  when  he 
found  any  one  who  did  not  as  greatly  respect  the 
lady,  to  offer  him  the  choice  of  swords  or  pis- 
tols. Even  for  Milan  he  finds  an  extenuating 
word. 

After  Servia  the  general  raised  more  foreign 
legions,  planned  further  expeditions;  in  Central 
America  reorganized  the  small  armies  of  the  small 
republics,  served  as  United  States  Consul,  and 
offered  his  sword  to  President  McKinley  for  use 
against  Spain.  But  with  Servia  the  most  active 
portion  of  the  life  of  the  general  ceased,  and  the 
rest  has  been  a  repetition  of  what  went  before. 
At  present  his  time  is  divided  between  New  York 
and  Virginia,  where  he  has  been  offered  an  execu- 
tive position  in  the  approaching  Jamestown  Ex- 
position. Both  North  and  South  he  has  many 
friends,  many  admirers.  But  his  life  is,  and,  from 
the  nature  of  his  profession,  must  always  be,  a 
lonely  one. 

While  other  men  remain  planted  in  one  spot, 
gathering  about  them  a  home,  sons  and  daughters, 
an  income  for  old  age,  Maclver  is  a  rolling  stone, 
a  piece  of  floating  sea-weed;  as  the  present  King 

30 


Major-General  Maclver 

of  England   called   him   fondly,  "that  vagabond 
soldier." 

To  a  man  who  has  lived  in  the  saddle  and  upon 
transports,  "neighbor"  conveys  nothing,  and  even 
"  comrade "  too  often  means  one  who  is  no  longer 
living. 

With  the  exception  of  the  United  States,  of  which 
he  now  is  a  naturalized  citizen,  the  general  has 
fought  for  nearly  every  country  in  the  world,  but 
if  any  of  those  for  which  he  lost  his  health  and 
blood,  and  for  which  he  risked  his  life,  remembers 
him,  it  makes  no  sign.  And  the  general  is  too 
proud  to  ask  to  be  remembered.  To-day  there  is 
no  more  interesting  figure  than  this  man  who  in 
years  is  still  young  enough  to  lead  an  army  corps, 
and  who,  for  forty  years,  has  been  selling  his 
sword  and  risking  his  life  for  presidents,  pretend- 
ers, charlatans,  and  emperors. 

He  finds  some  mighty  changes :  Cuba,  which  he 
fought  to  free,  is  free;  men  of  the  South,  with 
whom  for  four  years  he  fought  shoulder  to 
shoulder,  are  now  wearing  the  blue;  the  empire  of 
Mexico,  for  which  he  fought,  is  a  republic;  the 
empire  of  France,  for  which  he  fought,  is  a  repub- 
lic; the  empire  of  Brazil,  for  which  he  fought 
is  a  republic;  the  dynasty  in  Servia,  to  which  he 
owes  his  greatest  honors,  has  been  wiped  out  by 


Major-General  Maclver 

murder.  From  none  of  the  eighteen  countries 
he  has  served  has  he  a  pension,  berth,  or  billet, 
and  at  sixty  he  finds  himself  at  home  in  every  land, 
but  with  a  home  in  none. 

Still  he  has  his  sword,  his  blanket,  and  in  the 
event  of  war,  to  obtain  a  commission  he  has  only 
to  open  his  tin  boxes  and  show  the  commissions 
already  won.  Indeed,  any  day.  in  a  new  uniform, 
and  under  the  Nineteenth  Flag,  the  general  may 
again  be  winning  fresh  victories  and  honors. 

And  so,  this  brief  sketch  of  him  is  left  unfin- 
ished. We  will  mark  it — To  be  continued. 


BARON 
JAMES  HARDEN-HICKEY 


BARON  JAMES   HARDEN-HICKEY 

THIS  is  an  attempt  to  tell  the  story  of  Baron 
Harden-Hickey,  the  Man  Who  Made  Him- 
self King,  the  man  who  was  born  after  his  time. 

If  the  reader,  knowing  something  of  the  strange 
career  of  Harden-Hickey,  wonders  why  one  writes 
of  him  appreciatively  rather  than  in  amusement, 
he  is  asked  not  to  judge  Harden-Hickey  as  one 
judges  a  contemporary. 

Harden-Hickey,  in  our  day,  was  as  incongru- 
ous a  figure  as  was  the  American  at  the  Court  of 
King  Arthur;  he  was  as  unhappily  out  of  the  pict- 
ure as  would  be  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  on  the  floor 
of  the  Board  of  Trade.  Judged,  as  at  the  time 
he  was  judged,  by  writers  of  comic  paragraphs,  by 
presidents  of  railroads,  by  amateur  "statesmen" 
at  Washington,  Harden-Hickey  was  a  joke.  To 
the  vacant  mind  of  the  village  idiot,  Rip  Van 
Winkle  returning  to  Falling  Water  also  was  a 
joke.  The  people  of  our  day  had  not  the  time  to 
understand  Harden-Hickey;  they  thought  him  a 
charlatan,  half  a  dangerous  adventurer  and  half  a 
fool;  and  Harden-Hickey  certainly  did  not  under- 

35 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

stand  them.  His  last  words,  addressed  to  his  wife, 
showed  this.  They  were:  "I  would  rather  die 
a  gentleman  than  live  a  blackguard  like  your 
father." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  father-in-law,  although 
living  under  the  disadvantage  of  being  a  Standard 
Oil  magnate,  neither  was,  nor  is,  a  blackguard, 
and  his  son-in-law  had  been  treated  by  him  gen- 
erously and  with  patience.  But  for  the  duellist  and 
soldier  of  fortune  it  was  impossible  to  sympathize 
with  a  man  who  took  no  greater  risk  in  life  than 
to  ride  on  one  of  his  own  railroads,  and  of  the 
views  the  two  men  held  of  each  other,  that  of  John 
H.  Flagler  was  probably  the  fairer  and  the  more 
kindly. 

Harden-Hickey  was  one  of  the  most  picturesque, 
gallant,  and  pathetic  adventurers  of  our  day;  but 
Flagler  also  deserves  our  sympathy. 

For  an  unimaginative  and  hard-working  Stand- 
ard Oil  king  to  have  a  D'Artagnan  thrust  upon 
him  as  a  son-in-law  must  be  trying. 

James  A.  Harden-Hickey,  James  the  First  of 
Trinidad,  Baron  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  was 
born  on  December  8,  1854.  As  to  the  date  all  his- 
torians agree;  as  to  where  the  important  event 
took  place  they  differ.  That  he  was  born  in  France 
his  friends  are  positive,  but  at  the  time  of  his  death 

36 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

in  El  Paso  the  San  Francisco  papers  claimed  him 
as  a  native  of  California.  All  agree  that  his  an- 
cestors were  Catholics  and  Royalists  who  left  Ire- 
land with  the  Stuarts  when  they  sought  refuge  in 
France.  The  version  which  seems  to  be  the  most 
probable  is  that  he  was  born  in  San  Francisco, 
where  as  one  of  the  early  settlers,  his  father,  E.  C. 
Hickey,  was  well  known,  and  that  early  in  his  life, 
in  order  to  educate  him,  the  mother  took  him  to 
Europe. 

There  he  was  educated  at  the  Jesuit  College  at 
Namur,  then  at  Leipsic,  and  later  entered  the 
Military  College  of  St.  Cyr. 

James  the  First  was  one  of  those  boys  who  never 
had  the  misfortune  to  grow  up.  To  the  moment 
of  his  death,  in  all  he  planned  you  can  trace  the 
effects  of  his  early  teachings  and  environment;  the 
influences  of  the  great  Church  that  nursed  him,  and 
of  the  city  of  Paris,  in  which  he  lived.  Under  the 
Second  Empire,  Paris  was  at  her  maddest,  baddest, 
and  best.  To-day  under  the  republic,  without  a 
court,  with  a  society  kept  in  funds  by  the  self- 
expatriated  wives  and  daughters  of  our  business 
men,  she  lacks  the  reasons  for  which  Baron  Hauss- 
mann  bedecked  her  and  made  her  beautiful.  The 
good  Loubet,  the  worthy  Fallieres,  except  that 
they  furnish  the  cartoonist  with  subjects  for  ridi- 

37 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

cule,  do  not  add  to  the  gayety  of  Paris.  But  when 
Harden-Hickey  was  a  boy,  Paris  was  never  so 
carelessly  gay,  so  brilliant,  never  so  overcharged 
with  life,  color,  and  adventure. 

In  those  days  "the  Emperor  sat  in  his  box  that 
night,"  and  in  the  box  opposite  sat  Cora  Pearl; 
veterans  of  the  campaign  of  Italy,  of  Mexico, 
from  the  desert  fights  of  Algiers,  sipped  sugar  and 
water  in  front  of  Tortoni's,  the  Cafe  Durand,  the 
Cafe  Riche;  the  sidewalks  rang  with  their  sabres, 
the  boulevards  were  filled  with  the  colors  of  the 
gorgeous  uniforms;  all  night  of  each  night  the 
Place  Vendome  shone  with  the  carriage  lamps  of 
the  visiting  pashas  from  Egypt,  of  nabobs  from 
India,  of  rastaquoueres  from  the  sister  empire  of 
Brazil;  the  state  carriages,  with  the  outriders  and 
postilions  in  the  green  and  gold  of  the  Empress, 
swept  through  the  Champs  Elysees,  and  at  the  Bal 
Bulier,  and  at  Mabile  the  students  and  "grisettes" 
introduced  the  cancan.  The  men  of  those  days 
were  Hugo,  Thiers,  Dumas,  Daudet,  Alfred  de 
Musset;  the  magnificent  blackguard,  the  Due 
de  Morny,  and  the  great,  simple  Canrobert,  the 
captain  of  barricades,  who  became  a  marshal  of 
France. 

Over  all  was  the  mushroom  Emperor,  his  ante- 
rooms crowded  with  the  titled  charlatans  of  Eu- 

38 


Baron  James  Harden- Hickey 

rope,  his  court  radiant  with  countesses  created 
overnight.  And  it  was  the  Emperor,  with  his  love 
of  theatrical  display,  of  gorgeous  ceremonies;  with 
his  restless  reaching  after  military  glory,  the  weary, 
cynical  adventurer,  that  the  boy  at  St.  Cyr  took  as 
his  model. 

Royalist  as  was  Harden-Hickey  by  birth  and 
tradition,  and  Royalist  as  he  always  remained,  it 
was  the  court  at  the  Tuileries  that  filled  his  imag- 
ination. The  Bourbons,  whom  he  served,  hoped 
some  day  for  a  court;  at  the  Tuileries  there  was  a 
court,  glittering  before  his  physical  eyes.  The 
Bourbons  were  pleasant  old  gentlemen,  who  later 
willingly  supported  him,  and  for  whom  always  he 
was  equally  willing  to  fight,  either  with  his  sword 
or  his  pen.  But  to  the  last,  in  his  mind,  he  carried 
pictures  of  the  Second  Empire  as  he,  as  a  boy,  had 
known  it. 

Can  you  not  imagine  the  future  James  the 
First,  barelegged,  in  a  black-belted  smock,  halting 
with  his  nurse,  or  his  priest,  to  gaze  up  in  awe- 
struck delight  at  the  great,  red-breeched  Zouaves 
lounging  on  guard  at  the  Tuileries  ? 

"When  I  grow  up/'  said  little  James  to  himself, 
not  knowing  that  he  never  would  grow  up,  "I 
shall  have  Zouaves  for  my  palace  guard." 

And  twenty  years  later,  when  he  laid  down  the 
39 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

laws  for  his  little  kingdom,  you  find  that  the  officers 
of  his  court  must  wear  the  mustache,  "  a  la  Louis 
Napoleon,"  and  that  the  Zouave  uniform  will  be 
worn  by  the  Palace  Guards. 

In  1883,  while  he  still  was  at  the  War  College, 
his  father  died,  and  when  he  graduated,  which  he 
did  with  honors,  he  found  himself  his  own  master. 
His  assets  were  a  small  income,  a  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  the  French  language,  and  the  reputation  of 
being  one  of  the  most  expert  swordsmen  in  Paris. 
He  chose  not  to  enter  the  army,  and  instead  be- 
came a  journalist,  novelist,  duellist,  an  habitue  of 
the  Latin  Quarter  and  the  boulevards. 

As  a  novelist  the  tides  of  his  books  suggest 
their  quality.  Among  them  are:  "Un  Amour 
Vendeen,"  "Lettres  d'un  Yankee,"  "Un  Amour 
dans  le  Monde,"  "Memoires  d'un  Gommeux," 
"  Merveilleuses  Aventures  de  Nabuchodonosor, 
Nosebreaker." 

Of  the  Catholic  Church  he  wrote  seriously,  ap- 
parently with  deep  conviction,  with  high  enthu- 
siasm. In  her  service  as  a  defender  of  the  faith 
he  issued  essays,  pamphlets,  "broadsides."  The 
opponents  of  the  Church  in  Paris  he  attacked  re- 
lentlessly. 

As  a  reward  for  his  championship  he  received 
the  title  of  baron. 

40 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

In  1878,  while  only  twenty-four,  he  married  the 
Countess  de  Saint-Pery,  by  whom  he  had  two 
children,  a  boy  and  a  girl,  and  three  years  later  he 
started  Triboulet.  It  was  this  paper  that  made 
him  famous  to  "all  Paris." 

It  was  a  Royalist  sheet,  subsidized  by  the  Count 
de  Chambord  and  published  in  the  interest  of  the 
Bourbons.  Until  1888  Harden-Hickey  was  its 
editor,  and  even  by  his  enemies  it  must  be  said 
that  he  served  his  employers  with  zeal.  During 
the  seven  years  in  which  the  paper  amused  Paris 
and  annoyed  the  republican  government,  as  its 
editor  Harden-Hickey  was  involved  in  forty-two 
lawsuits,  for  different  editorial  indiscretions,  fined 
three  hundred  thousand  francs,  and  was  a  princi- 
pal in  countless  duels. 

To  his  brother  editors  his  standing  interrogation 
was:  "Would  you  prefer  to  meet  me  upon  the 
editorial  page,  or  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne?" 
Among  those  who  met  him  in  the  Bois  were 
Aurelien  Scholl,  H.  Lavenbryon,  M.  Taine,  M. 
de  Cyon,  Philippe  Du  Bois,  Jean  Moreas. 

In  1888,  either  because,  his  patron  the  Count 
de  Chambord  having  died,  there  was  no  more 
money  to  pay  the  fines,  or  because  the  patience  of 
the  government  was  exhausted,  Triboulet  ceased 
to  exist,  and  Harden-Hickey,  claiming  the  paper 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

had  been  suppressed  and  he  himself  exiled,  crossed 
to  London. 

From  there  he  embarked  upon  a  voyage  around 
the  world,  which  lasted  two  years,  and  in  the  course 
of  which  he  discovered  the  island  kingdom  of  which 
he  was  to  be  the  first  and  last  king.  Previous  to 
his  departure,  having  been  divorced  from  the 
Countess  de  Saint-Pery,  he  placed  his  boy  and  girl 
in  the  care  of  a  fellow-journalist  and  very  dear 
friend,  the  Count  de  la  Boissiere,  of  whom  later 
we  shall  hear  more. 

Harden-Hickey  started  around  the  world  on  the 
dstoria,  a  British  merchant  vessel  bound  for  India 
by  way  of  Cape  Horn,  Captain  Jackson  com- 
manding. 

When  off"  the  coast  of  Brazil  the  ship  touched  at 
the  uninhabited  island  of  Trinidad.  Historians 
of  James  the  First  say  that  it  was  through  stress 
of  weather  that  the  Astoria  was  driven  to  seek 
refuge  there,  but  as,  for  six  months  of  the  year,  to 
make  a  landing  on  the  island  is  almost  impossible, 
and  as  at  any  time,  under  stress  of  weather,  Trini- 
dad would  be  a  place  to  avoid,  it  is  more  likely 
Jackson  put  in  to  replenish  his  water-casks,  or  to 
obcain  a  supply  of  turtle  meat. 

Or  it  may  have  been  that,  having  told  Har- 
den-Hickey of  the  derelict  island,  the  latter  per- 

42 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

suaded  the  captain  to  allow  him  to  land  and  ex- 
plore it.  Of  this,  at  least,  we  are  certain,  a  boat 
was  sent  ashore,  Harden-Hickey  went  ashore  in  it, 
and  before  he  left  the  island,  as  a  piece  of  no  man's 
land,  belonging  to  no  country,  he  claimed  it  in  his 
own  name,  and  upon  the  beach  raised  a  flag  of  his 
own  design. 

The  island  of  Trinidad  claimed  by  Harden- 
Hickey  must  not  be  confused  with  the  larger  Trin- 
idad belonging  to  Great  Britain  and  lying  off 
Venezuela. 

The  English  Trinidad  is  a  smiling,  peaceful 
spot  of  great  tropical  beauty;  it  is  one  of  the  fair- 
est places  in  the  West  Indies.  At  every  hour  of 
the  year  the  harbor  of  Port  of  Spain  holds  open 
its  arms  to  vessels  of  every  draught.  A  governor  in 
a  pith  helmet,  a  cricket  club,  a  bishop  in  gaiters, 
and  a  botanical  garden  go  to  make  it  a  prosper- 
ous and  contented  colony.  But  the  little  derelict 
Trinidad,  in  latitude  20°  30'  south,  and  longitude 
29°  22'  west,  seven  hundred  miles  from  the  coast 
of  Brazil,  is  but  a  spot  upon  the  ocean.  On  most 
maps  it  is  not  even  a  spot.  Except  by  birds, 
turtles,  and  hideous  land-crabs,  it  is  uninhabited; 
and  against  the  advances  of  man  its  shores  are  for- 
tified with  cruel  ridges  of  coral,  jagged  limestone 
rocks,  and  a  tremendous  towering  surf  which,  even 

43 


Baron  James  Harden- Hickey 

in  a  dead  calm,  beats  many  feet  high  against  the 
coast. 

In  1698  Dr.  Halley  visited  the  island,  and  says 
he  found  nothing  living  but  doves  and  land-crabs. 
"Saw  many  green  turtles  in  sea,  but  by  reason  of 
the  great  surf,  could  catch  none." 

After  Halley's  visit,  in  1700  the  island  was 
settled  by  a  few  Portuguese  from  Brazil.  The 
ruins  of  their  stone  huts  are  still  in  evidence.  But 
Amaro  Delano,  who  called  in  1803,  makes  no 
mention  of  the  Portuguese;  and  when,  in  1822, 
Commodore  Owen  visited  Trinidad,  he  found 
nothing  living  there  save  cormorants,  petrels, 
gannets,  man-of-war  birds,  and  "turtles  weighing 
from  five  hundred  to  seven  hundred  pounds." 

In  1889  E.  F.  Knight,  who  in  the  Japanese- 
Russian  War  represented  the  London  Morning 
Post,  visited  Trinidad  in  his  yacht  in  search  of 
buried  treasure. 

Alexander  Dalrymple,  in  his  book  entitled 
"Collection  of  Voages,  chiefly  in  the  Southern 
Atlantick  Ocean,  1775,"  tells  how,  in  1700,  he 
"took  possession  of  the  island  in  his  Majesty's 
name  as  knowing  it  to  be  granted  by  the  King's 
letter  patent,  leaving  a  Union  Jack  flying." 

So  it  appears  that  before  Harden-Hickey  seized 
the  island  it  already  had  been  claimed  by  Great 

44 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

Britain,  and  later,  on  account  of  the  Portuguese 
settlement,  by  Brazil.  The  answer  Harden-Hickey 
made  to  these  claims  was  that  the  English  never 
settled  in  Trinidad,  and  that  the  Portuguese  aban- 
doned it,  and,  therefore,  their  claims  lapsed.  In 
his  "prospectus"  of  his  island,  Harden-Hickey 
himself  describes  it  thus: 

"Trinidad  is  about  five  miles  long  and  three 
miles  wide.  In  spite  of  its  rugged  and  uninviting 
appearance,  the  inland  plateaus  are  rich  with 
luxuriant  vegetation. 

"Prominent  among  this  is  a  peculiar  species 
of  bean,  which  is  not  only  edible,  but  extremely 
palatable.  The  surrounding  seas  swarm  with  fish, 
which  as  yet  are  wholly  unsuspicious  of  the  hook. 
Dolphins,  rock-cod,  pigfish,  and  blackfish  may 
be  caught  as  quickly  as  they  can  be  hauled  out. 
I  look  to  the  sea  birds  and  the  turtles  to  afford  our 
principal  source  of  revenue.  Trinidad  is  the  breed- 
ing-place of  almost  the  entire  feathery  population 
of  the  South  Atlantic  Ocean.  The  exportation  of 
guano  alone  should  make  my  little  country  pros- 
perous. Turtles  visit  the  island  to  deposit  eggs, 
and  at  certain  seasons  the  beach  is  literally  alive 
with  them.  The  only  drawback  to  my  projected 
kingdom  is  the  fact  that  it  has  no  good  harbor 
and  can  be  approached  only  when  the  sea  is  calm." 

45 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

As  a  matter  of  fact  sometimes  months  pass 
before  it  is  possible  to  effect  a  landing. 

Another  asset  of  the  island  held  out  by  the 
prospectus  was  its  great  store  of  buried  treasure. 
Before  Harden-Hickey  seized  the  island,  this 
treasure  had  made  it  known.  This  is  the  legend. 
In  1821  a  great  store  of  gold  and  silver  plate 
plundered  from  Peruvian  churches  had  been  con- 
cealed on  the  islands  by  pirates  near  Sugar  Loaf 
Hill,  on  the  shore  of  what  is  known  as  the  South- 
west Bay.  Much  of  this  plate  came  from  the 
cathedral  at  Lima,  having  been  carried  from 
there  during  the  war  of  independence  when  the 
Spanish  residents  fled  the  country.  In  their  eager- 
ness to  escape  they  put  to  sea  in  any  ship  that 
offered,  and  these  unarmed  and  unseaworthy 
vessels  fell  an  easy  prey  to  pirates.  One  of  these 
pirates  on  his  death-bed,  in  gratitude  to  his  former 
captain,  told  him  the  secret  of  the  treasure.  In 
1892  this  captain  was  still  living,  in  Newcastle, 
England,  and  although  his  story  bears  a  family 
resemblance  to  every  other  story  of  buried  treasure, 
there  were  added  to  the  tale  of  the  pirate  some 
corroborative  details.  These,  in  twelve  years,  in- 
duced five  different  expeditions  to  visit  the  island. 
The  two  most  important  were  that  of  E.  F.  Knight 
and  one  from  the  Tyne  in  the  bark  Aurea. 

46 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

In  his  "Cruise  of  the  Alerte"  Knight  gives  a 
full  description  of  the  island,  and  of  his  attempt 
to  find  the  treasure.  In  this,  a  landslide  having 
covered  the  place  where  it  was  buried,  he  was 
unsuccessful. 

But  Knight's  book  is  the  only  source  of  accurate 
information  concerning  Trinidad,  and  in  writing 
his  prospectus  it  is  evident  that  Harden-Hickey 
was  forced  to  borrow  from  it  freely.  Knight  him- 
self says  that  the  most  minute  and  accurate  de- 
scription of  Trinidad  is  to  be  found  in  the  "Frank 
Mildmay"  of  Captain  Marryat.  He  found  it  so 
easy  to  identify  each  spot  mentioned  in  the  novel 
that  he  believes  the  author  of  "Midshipman 
Easy"  himself  touched  there. 

After  seizing  Trinidad,  Harden-Hickey  rounded 
the  Cape  and  made  north  to  Japan,  China,  and 
India.  In  India  he  became  interested  in  Budd- 
hism, and  remained  for  over  a  year  questioning 
the  priests  of  that  religion  and  studying  its  tenets 
and  history. 

On  his  return  to  Paris,  in  1890,  he  met  Miss 
Annie  Harper  Flagler,  daughter  of  John  H. 
Flagler.  A  year  later,  on  St.  Patrick's  Day, 
1891,  at  the  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church, 
Miss  Flagler  became  the  Baroness  Harden-Hickey. 
The  Rev.  John  Hall  married  them. 

47 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

For  the  next  two  years  Harden-Hickey  lived  in 
New  York,  but  so  quietly  that,  except  that  he  lived 
quietly,  it  is  difficult  to  find  out  anything  concern- 
ing him.  The  man  who,  a  few  years  before,  had 
delighted  Paris  with  his  daily  feuilletons,  with  his 
duels,  with  his  forty-two  lawsuits,  who  had  been 
the  master  of  revels  in  the  Latin  Quarter,  in  New 
York  lived  almost  as  a  recluse,  writing  a  book  on 
Buddhism.  While  he  was  in  New  York  I  was  a 
reporter  on  the  Evening  Sun,  but  I  cannot  recall 
ever  having  read  his  name  in  the  newspapers  of 
that  day,  and  I  heard  of  him  only  twice;  once  as 
giving  an  exhibition  of  his  water-colors  at  the 
American  Art  Galleries,  and  again  as  the  author 
of  a  book  I  found  in  a  store  in  Twenty-second 
Street,  just  east  of  Broadway,  then  the  home  of  the 
Truth  Seeker  Publishing  Company. 

It  was  a  grewsome  compilation  and  had  just  ap- 
peared in  print.  It  was  called  "  Euthanasia,  or  the 
Ethics  of  Suicide."  This  book  was  an  apology 
or  plea  for  self-destruction.  In  it  the  baron  laid 
down  those  occasions  when  he  considered  suicide 
pardonable,  and  when  obligatory.  To  support 
his  arguments  and  to  show  that  suicide  was  a 
noble  act,  he  quoted  Plato,  Cicero,  Shakespeare, 
and  even  misquoted  the  Bible.  He  gave  a  list  of 
poisons,  and  the  amount  of  each  necessary  to  kill 

48 


Baron  Harden-Hickey,  King  James  I.  of  Trinidad. 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

a  human  being.  To  show  how  one  can  depart  from 
life  with  the  least  pain,  he  illustrated  the  text  with 
most  unpleasant  pictures,  drawn  by  himself. 

The  book  showed  how  far  Harden-Hickey  had 
strayed  from  the  teachings  of  the  Jesuit  College  at 
Namur,  and  of  the  Church  that  had  made  him 
"noble." 

All  of  these  two  years  had  not  been  spent  only 
in  New  York.  Harden-Hickey  made  excursions 
to  California,  to  Mexico,  and  to  Texas,  and  in 
each  of  these  places  bought  cattle  ranches  and 
mines.  The  money  to  pay  for  these  investments 
came  from  his  father-in-law.  But  not  directly. 
Whenever  he  wanted  money  he  asked  his  wife, 
or  De  la  Boissiere,  who  was  a  friend  also  of  Flagler, 
to  obtain  it  for  him. 

His  attitude  toward  his  father-in-law  is  diffi- 
cult to  explain.  It  is  not  apparent  that  Flagler 
ever  did  anything  which  could  justly  offend  him; 
indeed,  he  always  seems  to  have  spoken  of  his 
son-in-law  with  tolerance,  and  often  with  awe,  as 
one  would  speak  of  a  clever,  wayward  child.  But 
Harden-Hickey  chose  to  regard  Flagler  as  his 
enemy,  as  a  sordid  man  of  business  who  could 
not  understand  the  feelings  and  aspirations  of  a 
genius  and  a  gentleman. 

Before  Harden-Hickey  married,  the  misunder- 
49 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

standing  between  his  wife's  father  and  himself 
began.  Because  he  thought  Harden-Hickey  was 
marrying  his  daughter  for  her  money,  Flagler  op- 
posed the  union.  Consequently,  Harden-Hickey 
married  Miss  Flagler  without  "settlements,"  and 
for  the  first  few  years  supported  her  without  aid 
from  her  father.  But  his  wife  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  a  manner  of  living  beyond  the  means  of 
the  soldier  of  fortune,  and  soon  his  income,  and 
then  even  his  capital,  was  exhausted.  From  her 
mother  the  baroness  inherited  a  fortune.  This 
was  in  the  hands  of  her  father  as  executor.  When 
his  own  money  was  gone,  Harden-Hickey  endeav- 
ored to  have  the  money  belonging  to  his  wife 
placed  to  her  credit,  or  to  his.  To  this,  it  is  said, 
Flagler,  on  the  ground  that  Harden-Hickey  was 
not  a  man  of  business,  while  he  was,  objected, 
and  urged  that  he  was,  and  that  if  it  remained  in 
his  hands  the  money  would  be  better  invested  and 
better  expended.  It  was  the  refusal  of  Flagler  to 
intrust  Harden-Hickey  with  the  care  of  his  wife's 
money  that  caused  the  breach  between  them. 

As  I  have  said,  you  cannot  judge  Harden- 
Hickey  as  you  would  a  contemporary.  With  the 
people  among  whom  he  was  thrown,  his  ideas 
were  entirely  out  of  joint.  He  should  have  lived 
in  the  days  of  "The  Three  Musketeers."  People 

50 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

who  looked  upon  him  as  working  for  his  own  hand 
entirely  misunderstood  him.  He  was  absolutely 
honest,  and  as  absolutely  without  a  sense  of  hu- 
mor. To  him,  to  pay  taxes,  to  pay  grocers'  bills, 
to  depend  for  protection  upon  a  policeman,  was 
intolerable.  He  lived  in  a  world  of  his  own  im- 
agining. And  one  day,  in  order  to  make  his 
imaginings  real,  and  to  escape  from  his  father- 
in-law's  unromantic  world  of  Standard  Oil  and 
Florida  hotels,  in  a  proclamation  to  the  powers  he 
announced  himself  as  King  James  the  First  of  the 
Principality  of  Trinidad. 

The  proclamation  failed  to  create  a  world  crisis. 
Several  of  the  powers  recognized  his  principality 
and  his  title;  but,  as  a  rule,  people  laughed,  won- 
dered, and  forgot.  That  the  daughter  of  John 
Flagler  was  to  rule  the  new  principality  gave  it  a 
"news  interest,"  and  for  a  few  Sundays  in  the  sup- 
plements she  was  hailed  as  the  "American  Queen." 

When  upon  the  subject  of  the  new  kingdom 
Flagler  himself  was  interviewed,  he  showed  an 
open  mind. 

"My  son-in-law  is  a  very  determined  man,"  he 
said;  "he  will  carry  out  any  scheme  in  which  he 
is  interested.  Had  he  consulted  me  about  this, 
I  would  have  been  glad  to  have  aided  him  with 
money  or  advice.  My  son-in-law  is  an  extremely 

51 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

well-read,  refined,  well-bred  man.  He  does  not 
court  publicity.  While  he  was  staying  in  my 
house  he  spent  nearly  all  the  time  in  the  library 
translating  an  Indian  book  on  Buddhism.  My 
daughter  has  no  ambition  to  be  a  queen  or  any- 
thing else  thanwhat  she  is — an  American  girl. 
But  my  son-in-law  means  to  carry  on  this  Trini- 
dad scheme,  and — he  will." 

From  his  father-in-law,  at  least,  Harden-Hickey 
could  not  complain  that  he  had  met  with  lack  of 
sympathy. 

The  rest  of  America  was  amused;  and  after  less 
than  nine  days,  indifferent.  But  Harden-Hickey, 
though  unobtrusively,  none  the  less  earnestly  con- 
tinued to  play  the  part  of  king.  His  friend  De  la 
Boissiere  he  appointed  his  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  and  established  in  a  Chancellery  at  217 
West  Thirty-sixth  Street,  New  York,  and  from 
there  was  issued  a  sort  of  circular,  or  prospectus, 
written  by  the  king,  and  signed  by  "Le  Grand 
Chancelier,  Secretaire  d'Etat  pour  les  Affaires 
Etrangeres,  M.  le  Comte  de  la  Boissiere." 

The  document,  written  in  French,  announced 
that  the  new  state  would  be  governed  by  a  military 
dictatorship,  that  the  royal  standard  was  a  yellow 
triangle  on  a  red  ground,  and  that  the  arms  of  the 
principality  were  "d'Or  chape  de  Gueules."  It 

52 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

pointed  out  naively  that  those  who  first  settled  on 
the  island  would  be  naturally  the  oldest  inhabitants, 
and  hence  would  form  the  aristocracy.  But  only 
those  who  at  home  enjoyed  social  position  and 
some  private  fortune  would  be  admitted  into  this 
select  circle. 

For  itself  the  state  reserved  a  monopoly  of  the 
guano,  of  the  turtles,  and  of  the  buried  treasure. 
And  both  to  discover  the  treasure  and  to  encourage 
settlers  to  dig  and  so  cultivate  the  soil,  a  percent- 
age of  the  treasure  was  promised  to  the  one  who 
found  it. 

Any  one  purchasing  ten  $200  bonds  was  en- 
titled to  a  free  passage  to  the  island,  and  after  a 
year,  should  he  so  desire  it,  a  return  trip.  The 
hard  work  was  to  be  performed  by  Chinese 
coolies,  the  aristocracy  existing  beautifully,  and, 
according  to  the  prospectus,  to  enjoy  "vie  d'un 
genre  tout  nouveau,  et  la  recherche  de  sensations 
nouvelles." 

To  reward  his  subjects  for  prominence  in  lit- 
erature, the  arts,  and  the  sciences,  his  Majesty 
established  an  order  of  chivalry.  The  official 
document  creating  this  order  reads: 


"We,  James,  Prince  of  Trinidad,  have  resolved 
to  commemorate  our  accession  to  the  throne  of 

53 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

Trinidad  by  the  institution  of  an  Order  of  Chival- 
ry, destined  to  reward  literature,  industry,  science, 
and  the  human  virtues,  and  by  these  presents  have 
established  and  do  institute,  with  cross  and  crown, 
the  Order  of  the  Insignia  of  the  Cross  of  Trinidad, 
of  which  we  and  our  heirs  and  successors  shall  be 
the  sovereigns. 

"Given  in  our  Chancellery  the  Eighth  of  the 
month  of  December,  one  thousand  eight  hundred 
and  ninety-three,  and  of  our  reign,  the  First  Year. 

"JAMES." 

There  were  four  grades :  Chevalier,  Commander, 
Grand  Officer,  and  Grand  Cross;  and  the  name 
of  each  member  of  the  order  was  inscribed  in  "The 
Book  of  Gold."  A  pension  of  one  thousand  francs 
was  given  to  a  Chevalier,  of  two  thousand  francs 
to  a  Commander,  and  of  three  thousand  francs  to 
a  Grand  Officer.  Those  of  the  grade  of  Grand 
Cross  were  content  with  a  plaque  of  eight  diamond- 
studded  rays,  with,  in  the  centre,  set  in  red  enamel, 
the  arms  of  Trinidad.  The  ribbon  was  red  and 
yellow. 

A  rule  of  the  order  read:  "The  costume  shall 
be  identical  with  that  of  the  Chamberlains  of  the 
Court  of  Trinidad,  save  the  buttons,  which  shall 
bear  the  impress  of  the  Crown  of  the  Order." 

For  himself,  King  James  commissioned  a  firm 
of  jewelers  to  construct  a  royal  crown.  In  design 

54 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

it  was  similar  to  the  one  which  surmounted  the 
cross  of  Trinidad.  It  is  shown  in  the  photo- 
graph of  the  insignia.  Also,  the  king  issued  a  set 
of  postage-stamps  on  which  was  a  picture  of  the 
island.  They  were  of  various  colors  and  denomi- 
nations, and  among  stamp-collectors  enjoyed  a 
certain  sale. 

To-day,  as  I  found  when  I  tried  to  procure  one 
to  use  in  this  book,  they  are  worth  many  times 
their  face  value. 

For  some  time  the  affairs  of  the  new  kingdom 
progressed  favorably.  In  San  Francisco,  King 
James,  in  person,  engaged  four  hundred  coolies 
and  fitted  out  a  schooner  which  he  sent  to  Trini- 
dad, where  it  made  regular  trips  between  his  prin- 
cipality and  Brazil;  an  agent  was  established  on 
the  island,  and  the  construction  of  docks,  wharves, 
and  houses  was  begun,  while  at  the  chancellery  in 
West  Thirty-sixth  Street,  the  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs  was  ready  to  furnish  would-be  settlers 
with  information. 

And  then,  out  of  a  smiling  sky,  a  sudden  and 
unexpected  blow  was  struck  at  the  independence 
of  the  little  kingdom.  It  was  a  blow  from  which 
it  never  recovered. 

In  July  of  1895,  while  constructing  a  cable  to 
Brazil,  Great  Britain  found  the  Island  of  Trini- 

55 


Baron  James  Harden -Hickey 

dad  lying  in  the  direct  line  she  wished  to  follow, 
and,  as  a  cable  station,  seized  it.  Objection  to 
this  was  made  by  Brazil,  and  at  Bahia  a  mob  with 
stones  pelted  the  sign  of  the  English  Consul- 
General. 

By  right  of  Halley's  discovery,  England  claimed 
the  island;  as  a  derelict  from  the  main  land, 
Brazil  also  claimed  it.  Between  the  rivals,  the 
world  saw  a  chance  for  war,  and  the  fact  that  the 
island  really  belonged  to  our  King  James  for  a 
moment  was  forgotten. 

But  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  was  at  his 
post.  With  promptitude  and  vigor  he  acted. 
He  addressed  a  circular  note  to  all  the  powers  of 
Europe,  and  to  our  State  Department  a  protest. 
It  read  as  follows: 

"  GRANDE  CHANCELLERIE  DE  LA  PRINCIPAUTE  DE  TRINIDAD, 

217  WEST  THIRTY-SIXTH  STREET, 

NEW  YORK  CITY,  U.  S.  A., 

"NEW  YORK,  July  30,  1895. 

"  To  His  Excellency  Mr.  the  Secretary  of  State  of 
the  Republic  of  the  United  States  of  North 
America,  Washington,  D.  C.: 

"EXCELLENCY: — I  have  the  honor  to  recall  to 
your  memory: 

"i.  That  in  the  course  of  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember, 1893,  Baron  Harden-Hickey  officially  noti- 

56 


Baron  James  Harden -Hickey 

fied  all  the  Powers  of  his  taking  possession  of  the 
uninhabited  island  of  Trinidad;   and 

"2.  That  in  course  of  January,  1894,  he  re- 
newed to  all  these  Powers  the  official  notification 
of  the  said  taking  of  possession,  and  informed  them 
at  the  same  time  that  from  that  date  the  land  would 
be  known  as  'Principality  of  Trinidad';  that  he 
took  the  title  of  '  Prince  of  Trinidad,'  and  would 
reign  under  the  name  of  James  I. 

"In  consequence  of  these  official  notifications 
several  Powers  have  recognized  the  new  Princi- 
pality and  its  Prince,  and  at  all  events  none  thought 
it  necessary  at  that  epoch  to  raise  objections  or 
formulate  opposition. 

"The  press  of  the  entire  world  has,  on  the  other 
hand,  often  acquainted  readers  with  these  facts, 
thus  giving  to  them  all  possible  publicity.  In 
consequence  of  the  accomplishment  of  these  va- 
rious formalities,  and  as  the  law  of  nations  pre- 
scribes that  'derelict'  territories  belong  to  who- 
ever will  take  possesson  of  them,  and  as  the  island 
of  Trinidad,  which  has  been  abandoned  for  years, 
certainly  belongs  to  the  aforesaid  category,  his 
Serene  Highness  Prince  James  I  was  authorized 
to  regard  his  rights  on  the  said  island  as  perfectly 
valid  and  indisputible. 

"Nevertheless,  your  Excellency  knows  that  re- 
cently, in  spite  of  all  the  legitimate  rights  of  my 
august  sovereign,  an  English  war-ship  has  disem- 
barked at  Trinidad  a  detachment  of  armed  troops 
and  taken  possession  of  the  island  in  the  name  of 
England. 

57 


Baron  James  Harden -Hickey 

"Following  this  assumption  of  territory,  the 
Brazilian  Government,  invoking  a  right  of  ancient 
Portuguese  occupation  (long  ago  outlawed),  has 
notified  the  English  Government  to  surrender  the 
island  to  Brazil. 

"I  beg  of  your  Excellency  to  ask  of  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States  of  North  America  to 
recognize  the  Principality  of  Trinidad  as  an  inde- 
pendent State,  and  to  come  to  an  understanding 
with  the  other  American  Powers  in  order  to  guar- 
antee its  neutrality. 

"Thus  the  Government  of  the  United  States  of 
North  America  will  once  more  accord  its  powerful 
assistance  to  the  cause  of  right  and  of  justice,  mis- 
understood by  England  and  Brazil,  put  an  end  to 
a  situation  which  threatens  to  disturb  the  peace, 
re-establish  concord  between  two  great  States 
ready  to  appeal  to  arms,  and  affirm  itself,  more- 
over, as  the  faithful  interpreter  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine. 

"  In  the  expectation  of  your  reply  please  accept, 
Excellency,  the  expression  of  my  elevated  con- 
sideration. 

"The  Grand  Chancellor,  Secretary  for  Foreign 
Affairs, 

"COMTE  DE  LA  BOISSIERE." 

At  that  time  Richard  Olney  was  Secretary  of 
State,  and  in  his  treatment  of  the  protest,  and  of 
the  gentleman  who  wrote  it,  he  fully  upheld  the 
reputation  he  made  while  in  office  of  lack  of  good 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

manners.  Saying  he  was  unable  to  read  the  hand- 
writing in  which  the  protest  was  written,  he  dis- 
posed of  it  in  a  way  that  would  suggest  itself 
naturally  to  a  statesman  and  a  gentleman.  As  a 
"crank"  letter  he  turned  it  over  to  the  Washington 
correspondents.  You  can  imagine  what  they  did 
with  it. 

The*  day  following  the  reporters  in  New  York 
swept  down  upon  the  chancellery  and  upon  the 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs.  It  was  the  "silly 
season"  in  August,  there  was  no  real  news  in 
town,  and  the  troubles  of  De  la  Boissiere  were 
allowed  much  space. 

They  laughed  at  him  and  at  his  king,  at  his 
chancellery,  at  his  broken  English,  at  his  "grave 
and  courtly  manners,"  even  at  his  clothes.  But  in 
spite  of  the  ridicule,  between  the  lines  you  could 
read  that  to  the  man  himself  it  all  was  terribly  real. 

I  had  first  heard  of  the  island  of  Trinidad  from 
two  men  I  knew  who  spent  three  months  on  it 
searching  for  the  treasure,  and  when  Harden- 
Hickey  proclaimed  himself  lord  of  the  island, 
through  the  papers  I  had  carefully  followed  his 
fortunes.  So,  partly  out  of  curiosity  and  partly 
out  of  sympathy,  I  called  at  the  chancellery. 

I  found  it  in  a  brownstone  house,  in  a  dirty 
neighborhood  just  west  of  Seventh  Avenue,  and  of 

59 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

where  now  stands  the  York  Hotel.  Three  weeks 
ago  I  revisited  it  and  found  it  unchanged.  At  the 
time  of  my  first  visit,  on  the  jamb  of  the  front  door 
was  pasted  a  piece  of  paper  on  which  was  written 
in  the  handwriting  of  De  la  Boissiere:  "Chancel- 
lerie  de  la  Principaute  de  Trinidad." 

The  chancellery  was  not  exactly  in  its  proper 
setting.  On  its  door-step  children  of  the  tenements 
were  playing  dolls  with  clothes-pins;  in  the  street  a 
huckster  in  raucous  tones  was  offering  wilted  cab- 
bages to  women  in  wrappers  leaning  from  the  fire- 
escapes;  the  smells  and  the  heat  of  New  York  in 
midsummer  rose  from  the  asphalt.  It  was  a  far 
cry  to  the  wave-swept  island  off  the  coast  of  Brazil. 

De  la  Boissiere  received  me  with  distrust.  The 
morning  papers  had  made  him  man-shy;  but, 
after  a  few  "Your  Excellencies'*  and  a  respectful 
inquiry  regarding  "His  Royal  Highness,"  his 
confidence  revived.  In  the  situation  he  saw 
nothing  humorous,  not  even  in  an  announcement 
on  the  wall  which  read:  "Sailings  to  Trinidad." 
Of  these  there  were  two;  on  March  i,  and  on 
October  i.  On  the  table  were  many  copies  of 
the  royal  proclamation,  the  postage-stamps  of  the 
new  government,  the  thousand-franc  bonds,  and, 
in  pasteboard  boxes,  the  gold  and  red  enamelled 
crosses  of  the  Order  of  Trinidad. 

60 


Baron  James  Harden -Hickey 

He  talked  to  me  frankly  and  fondly  of  Prince 
James.  Indeed,  I  never  met  any  man  who  knew 
Harden-Hickey  well  who  did  not  speak  of  him 
with  aggressive  loyalty.  If  at  his  eccentricities 
they  smiled,  it  was  with  the  smile  of  affection.  It 
was  easy  to  see  De  la  Boissiere  regarded  him  not 
only  with  the  affection  of  a  friend,  but  with  the 
devotion  of  a  true  subject.  In  his  manner  he 
himself  was  courteous,  gentle,  and  so  distinguished 
that  I  felt  as  though  I  were  enjoying,  on  intimate 
terms,  an  audience  with  one  of  the  prime-min- 
isters of  Europe. 

And  he,  on  his  part,  after  the  ridicule  of  the 
morning  papers,  to  have  any  one  with  outward 
seriousness  accept  his  high  office  and  his  king, 
was,  I  believe,  not  ungrateful. 

I  told  him  I  wished  to  visit  Trinidad,  and  in 
that  I  was  quite  serious.  The  story  of  an  island 
filled  with  buried  treasure,  and  governed  by  a 
king,  wbose  native  subjects  were  turtles  and  sea- 
gulls, promised  to  make  interesting  writing. 

The  count  was  greatly  pleased.  I  believe  in 
me  he  saw  his  first  bona-fide  settler,  and  when  I 
rose  to  go  he  even  lifted  one  of  the  crosses  of 
Trinidad  and,  before  my  envious  eyes,  regarded  it 
uncertainly. 

Perhaps,  had  he  known  that  of  all  decorations 
61 


Baron  James  Harden -Hickey 

it  was  the  one  I  most  desired;  had  I  only  then  and 
there  booked  my  passage,  or  sworn  allegiance  to 
King  James,  who  knows  but  that  to-day  I  might 
be  a  chevalier,  with  my  name  in  the  "Book  of 
Gold "  ?  But  instead  of  bending  the  knee,  I 
reached  for  my  hat;  the  count  replaced  the  cross 
in  its  pasteboard  box,  and  for  me  the  psychologi- 
cal moment  had  passed. 

Others,  more  deserving  of  the  honor,  were 
more  fortunate.  Among  my  fellow-reporters  who, 
like  myself,  came  to  scoff,  and  remained  to  pray, 
was  Henri  Pene  du  Bois,  for  some  time,  until  his 
recent  death,  the  brilliant  critic  of  art  and  music 
of  the  American.  Then  he  was  on  the  Times,  and 
Henry  N.  Gary,  now  of  the  Morning  Telegraph, 
was  his  managing  editor. 

When  Du  Bois  reported  to  Gary  on  his  assign- 
ment, he  said:  'There  is  nothing  funny  in  that 
story.  It's  pathetic.  Both  those  men  are  in  ear- 
nest. They  are  convinced  they  are  being  robbed 
of  their  rights.  Their  only  fault  is  that  they 
have  imagination,  and  that  the  rest  of  us  lack  it. 
That's  the  way  it  struck  me,  and  that's  the  way 
the  story  ought  to  be  written." 

"Write  it  that  way,"  said  Gary. 

So,  of  all  the  New  York  papers,  the  Times,  for 
a  brief  period,  became  the  official  organ  of  the 

62 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

Government  of  James  the  First,  and  in  time  Gary 
and  Du  Bois  were  created  Chevaliers  of  the  Order 
of  Trinidad,  and  entitled  to  wear  uniforms  "simi- 
lar to  those  of  the  Chamberlains  of  the  Court,  save 
that  the  buttons  bear  the  impress  of  the  Royal 
Crown." 

The  attack  made  by  Great  Britain  and  Brazil 
upon  the  independence  of  the  principality,  while 
it  left  Harden-Hickey  in  the  position  of  a  king  in 
exile,  brought  him  at  once  another  crown,  which, 
by  those  who  offered  it  to  him,  was  described 
as  of  incomparably  greater  value  than  that  of 
Trinidad. 

In  the  first  instance  the  man  had  sought  the 
throne;  in  this  case  the  throne  sought  the  man. 

In  1893  in  San  Francisco,  Ralston  J.  Mar- 
kowe,  a  lawyer  and  a  one-time  officer  of  artillery 
in  the  United  States  army,  gained  renown  as  one 
of  the  Morrow  filibustering  expedition  which  at- 
tempted to  overthrow  the  Dole  government  in  the 
Hawaiian  Isles  and  restore  to  the  throne  Queen 
Liliuokalani.  In  San  Francisco  Markowe  was 
nicknamed  the  "Prince  of  Honolulu,"  as  it  was 
understood,  should  Liliuokalani  regain  her  crown, 
he  would  be  rewarded  with  some  high  office. 
But  in  the  star  of  Liliuokalani,  Markowe  appar- 
ently lost  faith,  and  thought  he  saw  in  Harden- 

63 


Baron  James  Harden -Hickey 

Hickey  timber  more  suitable  for  king-making. 
Accordingly,  twenty-four  days  after  the  "protest" 
was  sent  to  our  State  Department,  Markowe 
switched  his  allegiance  to  Harden-Hickey,  and  to 
him  addressed  the  following  letter: 

"  SAN  FRANCISCO,  August  26,  1895. 

"BARON  HARDEN-HICKEY,  Los  ANGELES,  CAL.: 

"Monseigneur — Your  favor  of  August  16  has 
been  received. 

"i.  I  am  the  duly  authorized  agent  of  the  Roy- 
alist party  in  so  far  as  it  is  possible  for  any  one  to 
occupy  that  position  under  existing  circumstances. 
With  the  Queen  in  prison  and  absolutely  cut  off 
from  all  communication  with  her  friends,  it  is  out 
of  the  question  for  me  to  carry  anything  like  formal 
credentials. 

"2.  Alienating  any  part  of  the  territory  cannot 
give  rise  to  any  constitutional  questions,  for  the 
reason  that  the  constitutions,  like  the  land  tenures, 
are  in  a  state  of  such  utter  confusion  that  only  a 
strong  hand  can  unravel  them,  and  the  restoration 
will  result  in  the  establishment  of  a  strong  military 
government.  If  I  go  down  with  the  expedition  I 
have  organized  I  shall  be  in  full  control  of  the  situ- 
ation and  in  a  position  to  carry  out  all  my  contracts. 

"3.  It  is  the  island  of  Kauai  on  which  I  propose 
to  establish  you  as  an  independent  sovereign. 

"4.  My  plan  is  to  successively  occupy  all  the 
islands,  leaving  the  capital  to  the  last.  When  the 

64. 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

others  have  fallen,  the  capital,  being  cut  off  from 
all  its  resources,  will  be  easily  taken,  and  may  very 
likely  fall  without  effort.  I  don't  expect  in  any 
case  to  have  to  fortify  myself  or  to  take  the  defen- 
sive, or  to  have  to  issue  a  call  to  arms,  as  I  shall 
have  an  overwhelming  force  to  join  me  at  once,  in 
addition  to  those  who  go  with  me,  who  by  them- 
selves will  be  sufficient  to  carry  everything  before 
them  without  active  cooperation  from  the  people 
there. 

"5.  The  Government  forces  consist  of  about 
1 60  men  and  boys,  with  very  imperfect  military 
training,  and  of  whom  about  forty  are  officers. 
They  are  organized  as  infantry.  There  are  also 
about  600  citizens  enrolled  as  a  reserve  guard, 
who  may  be  called  upon  in  case  of  an  emergency, 
and  about  150  police.  We  can  fully  rely  upon  the 
assistance  of  all  the  police  and  from  one-quarter 
to  one-half  of  the  other  troops.  And  of  the  re- 
mainder many  will  under  no  circumstances  engage 
in  a  sharp  fight  in  defense  of  the  present  govern- 
ment. There  are  now  on  the  island  plenty  of  men 
and  arms  to  accomplish  our  purpose,  and  if  my 
expedition  does  not  get  off  very  soon  the  people 
there  will  be  organized  to  do  the  work  without 
other  assistance  from  here  than  the  direction  of  a 
few  leaders,  of  which  they  stand  more  in  need  than 
anything  else. 

"6.  The  tonnage  of  the  vessel  is  146.  She  at 
present  has  berth-room  for  twenty  men,  but  bunks 
can  be  arranged  in  the  hold  for  256  more,  with 
provision  for  ample  ventilation.  She  has  one 

65 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

complete  set  of  sails  and  two  extra  spars.  The 
remaining  information  in  regard  to  her  I  will  have 
to  obtain  and  send  you  to-morrow.  I  think  it 
must  be  clear  to  you  that  the  opportunity  now 
offered  you  will  be  of  incomparably  greater  value 
at  once  than  Trinidad  would  ever  be.  Still  hoping 
that  I  may  have  an  interview  with  you  at  an  early 
date,  respectfully  yours, 

"RALSTON  J.  MARKOWE." 


What  Harden-Hickey  thought  of  this  is  not 
known,  but  as  two  weeks  before  he  received  it  he 
had  written  Markowe,  asking  him  by  what  au- 
thority he  represented  the  Royalists  of  Honolulu,  it 
seems  evident  that  when  the  crown  of  Hawaii  was 
first  proffered  him  he  did  not  at  once  spurn  it. 

He  now  was  in  the  peculiar  position  of  being  a 
deposed  king  of  an  island  in  the  South  Atlantic, 
which  had  been  taken  from  him,  and  king-elect 
of  an  island  in  the  Pacific,  which  was  his  if  he  could 
take  it. 

This  was  in  August  of  1895.  For  the  two 
years  following,  Harden-Hickey  was  a  soldier  of 
misfortunes.  Having  lost  his  island  kingdom,  he 
could  no  longer  occupy  himself  with  plans  for 
its  improvement.  It  had  been  his  toy.  They  had 
taken  it  from  him,  and  the  loss  and  the  ridicule 
which  followed  hurt  him  bitterly. 

66 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

And  for  the  lands  he  really  owned  in  Mexico 
and  California,  and  which,  if  he  were  to  live  in 
comfort,  it  was  necessary  he  should  sell,  he  could 
find  no  purchaser;  and,  moreover,  having  quar- 
relled with  his  father-in-law,  he  had  cut  off  his 
former  supply  of  money.  The  need  of  it  pinched 
him  cruelly. 

The  advertised  cause  of  this  quarrel  was  suffi- 
ciently characteristic  to  be  the  real  one.  Moved 
by  the  attack  of  Great  Britain  upon  his  principal- 
ity, Harden-Hickey  decided  upon  reprisals.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  always  he  was  more 
Irish  than  French.  On  paper  he  organized  an 
invasion  of  England  from  Ireland,  the  home  of 
his  ancestors.  It  was  because  Flagler  refused  to 
give  him  money  for  this  adventure  that  he  broke 
with  him.  His  friends  say  this  was  the  real  rea- 
son of  the  quarrel,  which  was  a  quarrel  on  the  side 
of  Harden-Hickey  alone. 

And  there  were  other,  more  intimate  troubles. 
While  not  separated  from  his  wife,  he  now  was 
seldom  in  her  company.  When  the  Baroness  was 
in  Paris,  Harden-Hickey  was  in  San  Francisco; 
when  she  returned  to  San  Francisco,  he  was  in 
Mexico.  The  fault  seems  to  have  been  his.  He 
was  greatly  admired  by  pretty  women.  His 
daughter  by  his  first  wife,  now  a  very  beautiful 

67 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

girl  of  sixteen,  spent  much  time  with  her  step- 
mother; and  when  not  on  his  father's  ranch  in 
Mexico,  his  son  also,  for  months  together,  was  at 
her  side.  The  husband  approved  of  this,  but  he 
himself  saw  his  wife  infrequently.  Nevertheless, 
early  in  the  spring  of  1898,  the  Baroness  leased  a 
house  in  Brockton  Square,  in  Riverside,  Cal., 
where  it  was  understood  by  herself  and  by  her 
friends  her  husband  would  join  her.  At  that 
time  in  Mexico  he  was  trying  to  dispose  of  a  large 
tract  of  land.  Had  he  been  able  to  sell  it,  the 
money  for  a  time  would  have  kept  one  even  of 
his  extravagances  contentedly  rich.  At  least,  he 
would  have  been  independent  of  his  wife  and  of 
her  father.  Up  to  February  of  1898  his  obtain- 
ing this  money  seemed  probable. 

Early  in  that  month  the  last  prospective  pur- 
chaser decided  not  to  buy. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  had  Harden-Hickey 
then  turned  to  his  father-in-law,  that  gentle- 
man, as  he  had  done  before,  would  have  opened 
an  account  for  him. 

But  the  Prince  of  Trinidad  felt  he  could  no 
longer  beg,  even  for  the  money  belonging  to 
his  wife,  from  the  man  he  had  insulted.  He 
could  no  longer  ask  his  wife  to  intercede  for 
him.  He  was  without  money  of  his  own,  with- 

68 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

out  the  means  of  obtaining  it;  from  his  wife  he 
had  ceased  to  expect  even  sympathy,  and  from 
the  world  he  knew,  the  fact  that  he  was  a  self- 
made  king  caused  him  always  to  be  pointed  out 
with  ridicule  as  a  charlatan,  as  a  jest. 

The  soldier  of  varying  fortunes,  the  duellist 
and  dreamer,  the  devout  Catholic  and  devout 
Buddhist,  saw  the  forty-third  year  of  his  life  only 
as  the  meeting-place  of  many  fiascos. 

His  mind  was  tormented  with  imaginary  wrongs, 
imaginary  slights,  imaginary  failures. 

This  young  man,  who  could  paint  pictures,  write 
books,  organize  colonies  oversea,  and  with  a 
sword  pick  the  buttons  from  a  waistcoat,  for- 
got the  twenty  good  years  still  before  him;  forgot 
that  men  loved  him  for  the  mistakes  he  had  made; 
that  in  parts  of  the  great  city  of  Paris  his  name 
was  still  spoken  fondly,  still  was  famous  and 
familiar. 

In  his  book  on  the  "Ethics  of  Suicide,"  for 
certain  hard  places  in  life  he  had  laid  down  an 
inevitable  rule  of  conduct. 

As  he  saw  it  he  had  come  to  one  of  those  hard 
places,  and  he  would  not  ask  of  others  what  he 
himself  would  not  perform. 

From  Mexico  he  set  out  for  California,  but 
not  to  the  house  his  wife  had  prepared  for  him. 

69 


Baron  James  Harden- Hickey 

Instead,  on  February  9,  1898,  at  El  Paso,  he  left 
the  train  and  registered  at  a  hotel. 

At  7.30  in  the  evening  he  went  to  his  room, 
and  when,  on  the  following  morning,  they  kicked 
in  the  door,  they  found  him  stretched  rigidly  upon 
the  bed,  like  one  lying  in  state,  with,  near  his 
hand,  a  half-emptied  bottle  of  poison. 

On  a  chair  was  pinned  this  letter  to  his  wife: 

"Mv  DEAREST, — No  news  from  you,  although 
you  have  had  plenty  of  rime  to  write.  Harvey  has 
written  me  that  he  has  no  one  in  view  at  present 
to  buy  my  land.  Well,  I  shall  have  tasted  the  cup 
of  bitterness  to  the  very  dregs,  but  I  do  not  com- 
plain. Good-by.  I  forgive  you  your  conduct 
toward  me  and  trust  you  will  be  able  to  forgive 
yourself.  I  prefer  to  be  a  dead  gentleman  to  a 
living  blackguard  like  your  father." 

And  when  they  searched  his  open  trunk  for 
something  that  might  identify  the  body  on  the 
bed,  they  found  the  crown  of  Trinidad. 

You  can  imagine  it:  the  mean  hotel  bedroom, 
the  military  figure  with  its  white  face  and  mus- 
tache, "b  la  Louis  Napoleon,"  at  rest  upon  the 
pillow,  the  startled  drummers  and  chambermaids 
peering  in  from  the  hall,  and  the  landlord,  or 
coroner,  or  doctor,  with  a  bewildered  counte- 

70 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

nance,  lifting  to  view  the  royal  crown  of  gilt  and 
velvet. 

The  other  actors  in  this,  as  Harold  Frederic 
called  it,  "Opera  BoufFe  Monarchy,"  are  still 
living. 

The  Baroness  Harden-Hickey  makes  her  home 
in  this  country. 

The  Count  de  la  Boissiere,  ex-Minister  of 
Foreign  Affairs,  is  still  a  leader  of  the  French 
colony  in  New  York,  and  a  prosperous  commis- 
sion merchant  with  a  suite  of  offices  on  Fifty- 
fourth  Street.  By  the  will  of  Harden-Hickey  he 
is  executor  of  his  estate,  guardian  of  his  children, 
and  what,  for  the  purpose  of  this  article,  is  of 
more  importance,  in  his  hands  lies  the  future  of 
the  kingdom  of  Trinidad.  When  Harden-Hickey 
killed  himself  the  title  to  the  island  was  in  dis- 
pute. Should  young  Harden-Hickey  wish  to 
claim  it,  it  still  would  be  in  dispute.  Meanwhile, 
by  the  will  of  the  First  James,  De  la  Boissiere  is 
appointed  perpetual  regent,  a  sort  of  "receiver," 
and  executor  of  the  principality. 

To  him  has  been  left  a  royal  decree  signed  and 
sealed,  but  blank.  In  the  will  the  power  to  fill 
in  this  blank  with  a  statement  showing  the  final 
disposition  of  the  island  has  been  bestowed  upon 
De  la  Boissiere. 


Baron  James  Harden-Hickey 

So,  some  day,  he  may  proclaim  the  accession 
of  a  new  king,  and  give  a  new  lease  of  life  to  the 
kingdom  of  which  Harden-Hickey  dreamed. 

But  unless  his  son,  or  wife,  or  daughter  should 
assert  his  or  her  rights,  which  is  not  likely  to 
happen,  so  ends  the  dynasty  of  James  the  First 
of  Trinidad,  Baron  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

To  the  wise  ones  in  America  he  was  a  fool,  and 
they  laughed  at  him;  to  the  wiser  ones,  he  was  a 
clever  rascal  who  had  evolved  a  new  real-estate 
scheme  and  was  out  to  rob  the  people — and  they 
respected  him.  To  my  mind,  of  them  all,  Harden- 
Hickey  was  the  wisest. 

Granted  one  could  be  serious,  what  could  be 
more  delightful  than  to  be  your  own  king  on 
your  own  island  ? 

The  comic  paragraphers,  the  business  men  of 
"hard,  common  sense/*  the  captains  of  industry 
who  laughed  at  him  and  his  national  resources  of 
buried  treasure,  turtles*  eggs,  and  guano,  with  his 
body-guard  of  Zouaves  and  his  Grand  Cross  of 
Trinidad,  certainly  possessed  many  things  that 
Harden-Hickey  lacked.  But  they  in  turn  lacked 
the  things  that  made  him  happy;  the  power  to 
"make  believe,"  the  love  of  romance,  the  touch  of 
adventure  that  plucked  him  by  the  sleeve. 

When,  as  boys,  we  used  to  say:  "Let*s  pretend 
72 


Baron  James  Harden- Hickey 

we're  pirates,"  as  a  man,  Harden-Hickey  begged: 
"Let's  pretend  I'm  a  king." 

But  the  trouble  was,  the  other  boys  had  grown 
up  and  would  not  pretend. 

For  some  reason  his  end  always  reminds  me  of 
the  closing  line  of  Pinero's  play,  when  the  ad- 
venturess, Mrs.  Tanqueray,  kills  herself,  and  her 
virtuous  stepchild  says:  "If  we  had  only  been 
kinder!" 


73 


WINSTON  SPENCER 
CHURCHILL 


WINSTON   SPENCER  CHURCHILL 

IN  the  strict  sense  of  the  phrase,  a  soldier  of 
of  fortune  is  a  man  who  for  pay,  or  for  the 
love  of  adventure,  fights  under  the  flag  of  any 
country. 

In  the  bigger  sense  he  is  the  kind  of  man  who 
in  any  walk  of  life  makes  his  own  fortune,  who, 
when  he  sees  it  coming,  leaps  to  meet  it,  and 
turns  it  to  his  advantage. 

Than  Winston  Spencer  Churchill  to-day  there 
are  few  young  men — and  he  is  a  very  young  man — 
—who  have  met  more  varying  fortunes,  and  none 
who  has  more  frequently  bent  them  to  his  own 
advancement.  To  him  it  has  been  indifferent 
whether,  at  the  moment,  the  fortune  seemed  good 
or  evil,  in  the  end  always  it  was  good. 

As  a  boy  officer,  when  other  subalterns  were 
playing  polo,  and  at  the  Gaiety  Theatre  attend- 
ing night  school,  he  ran  away  to  Cuba  and  fought 
with  the  Spaniards.  For  such  a  breach  of  mili- 
tary discipline,  any  other  officer  would  have  been 
court-martialled.  Even  his  friends  feared  that  by 
his  foolishness  his  career  in  the  army  was  at  an 

77 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

end.  Instead,  his  escapade  was  made  a  question 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  fact  brought 
him  such  publicity  that  the  Daily  Graphic  paid 
him  handsomely  to  write  on  the  Cuban  Revolu- 
tion, and  the  Spanish  Government  rewarded  him 
with  the  Order  of  Military  Merit. 

At  the  very  outbreak  of  the  Boer  war  he  was 
taken  prisoner.  It  seemed  a  climax  of  misfort- 
une. With  his  brother  officers  he  had  hoped  in 
that  campaign  to  acquit  himself  with  credit,  and 
that  he  should  lie  inactive  in  Pretoria  appeared  a 
terrible  calamity.  To  the  others  who,  through 
many  heart-breaking  months,  suffered  imprison- 
ment, it  continued  to  be  a  calamity.  But  within 
six  weeks  of  his  capture  Churchill  escaped,  and, 
after  many  adventures,  rejoined  his  own  army  to 
find  that  the  calamity  had  made  him  a  hero. 

When  after  the  battle  of  Omdurman,  in  his 
book  on  "The  River  War,"  he  attacked  Lord 
Kitchener,  those  who  did  not  like  him,  and  they 
were  many,  said:  "That's  the  end  of  Winston 
in  the  army.  He'll  never  get  another  chance  to 
criticise  K.  of  K." 

But  only  two  years  later  the  chance  came, 
when,  no  longer  a  subaltern,  but  as  a  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  he  patronized  Kitch- 
ener by  defending  him  from  the  attacks  of  others. 

78 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

Later,  when  his  assaults  upon  the  leaders  of  his 
own  party  closed  to  him,  even  in  his  own  constitu- 
ency, the  Conservative  debating  clubs,  again  his 
ill-wishers  said:  "This  is  the  end.  He  has  ridi- 
culed those  who  sit  in  high  places.  He  has 
offended  his  cousin  and  patron,  the  Duke  of 
Marlborough.  Without  political  friends,  without 
the  influence  and  money  of  the  Marlborough  family 
he  is  a  political  nonentity."  That  was  eighteen 
months  ago.  To-day,  at  the  age  of  thirty-two,  he 
is  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Government  party, 
Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies,  and  with  the 
Liberals  the  most  popular  young  man  in  public  life. 
Only  last  Christmas,  at  a  banquet,  Sir  Ed- 
ward Grey,  the  new  Foreign  Secretary,  said  of 
him:  "Mr.  Winston  Churchill  has  achieved  dis- 
tinction in  at  least  five  different  careers — as  a 
soldier,  a  war  correspondent,  a  lecturer,  an  author, 
and  last,  but  not  least,  as  a  politician.  I  have 
understated  it  even  now,  for  he  has  achieved  two 
careers  as  a  politician — one  on  each  side  of  the 
House.  His  first  career  on  the  Government  side 
was  a  really  distinguished  career.  I  trust  the 
second  will  be  even  more  distinguished — and  more 
prolonged.  The  remarkable  thing  is  that  he  has 
done  all  this  when,  unless  appearances  very 
much  belie  him,  he  has  not  reached  the  age  of 

79 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

sixty-four,  which  is  the  minimum  age  at  which 
the  politician  ceases  to  be  young." 

Winston  Leonard  Spencer  Churchill  was  born 
thirty-two  years  ago,  in  November,  1874.  By 
birth  he  is  half-American.  His  father  was  Lord 
Randolph  Churchill,  and  his  mother  was  Jennie 
Jerome,  of  New  York.  On  the  father's  side  he 
is  the  grandchild  of  the  seventh  Duke  of  Marl- 
borough,  on  the  distaff  side,  of  Leonard  Jerome. 

To  a  student  of  heredity  it  would  be  interest- 
ing to  try  and  discover  from  which  of  these  an- 
cestors Churchill  drew  those  qualities  which  in 
him  are  most  prominent,  and  which  have  led  to 
his  success. 

What  he  owes  to  his  father  and  mother  it  is 
difficult  to  overestimate,  almost  as  difficult  as  to 
overestimate  what  he  has  accomplished  by  his 
own  efforts. 

He  was  not  a  child  born  a  full-grown  genius  of 
commonplace  parents.  Rather  his  fate  threatened 
that  he  should  always  be  known  as  the  son  of  his 
father.  And  certainly  it  was  asking  much  of  a 
boy  that  he  should  live  up  to  a  father  who  was  one 
of  the  most  conspicuous,  clever,  and  erratic  states- 
men of  the  later  Victorian  era,  and  a  mother  who 
is  as  brilliant  as  she  is  beautiful. 

For  at  no  time  was  the  American  wife  content 
80 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

to  be  merely  ornamental.  Throughout  the  polit- 
ical career  of  her  husband  she  was  his  helpmate, 
and  as  an  officer  of  the  Primrose  League,  as  an 
editor  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Review,  as,  for  many 
hot,  weary  months  in  Durban  Harbor,  the  head 
of  the  hospital  ship  Maine,  she  has  shown  an 
acute  mind  and  real  executive  power.  At  the 
polls  many  votes  that  would  not  respond  to  the 
arguments  of  the  husband,  and  later  of  the  son, 
were  gained  over  to  the  cause  by  the  charm  and 
wit  of  the  American  woman. 

In  his  earlier  days,  if  one  can  have  days  any 
earlier  than  those  he  now  enjoys,  Churchill  was 
entirely  influenced  by  two  things:  the  tremendous 
admiration  he  felt  for  his  father,  which  filled  him 
with  ambition  to  follow  in  his  orbit,  and  the  cama- 
raderie of  his  mother,  who  treated  him  less  like  a 
mother  than  a  sister  and  companion. 

Indeed,  Churchill  was  always  so  precocious 
that  I  cannot  recall  the  time  when  he  was  young 
enough  to  be  Lady  Randolph's  son;  certainly,  I 
cannot  recall  the  time  when  she  was  old  enough 
to  be  his  mother. 

When  first  I  knew  him  he  had  passed  through 
Harrow  and  Sandhurst  and  was  a  second  lieu- 
tenant in  the  Queen's  Own  Hussars.  He  was 
just  of  age,  but  appeared  much  younger. 

81 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

He  was  below  medium  height,  a  slight,  deli- 
cate-looking boy;  although,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
extremely  strong,  with  blue  eyes,  many  freckles, 
and  hair  which  threatened  to  be  a  decided  red, 
but  which  now  has  lost  its  fierceness.  When  he 
spoke  it  was  with  a  lisp,  which  also  has  changed, 
and  which  now  appears  to  be  merely  an  intentional 
hesitation. 

His  manner  of  speaking  was  nervous,  eager, 
explosive.  He  used  many  gestures,  some  of 
which  were  strongly  reminiscent  of  his  father, 
of  whom  he,  unlike  most  English  lads,  who 
shy  at  mentioning  a  distinguished  parent,  con- 
stantly spoke. 

He  even  copied  his  father  in  his  little  tricks  of 
manner.  Standing  with  hands  shoved  under  the 
frock-coat  and  one  resting  on  each  hip  as  though 
squeezing  in  the  waist  line;  when  seated,  resting 
the  elbows  on  the  arms  of  the  chair  and  nervously 
locking  and  unclasping  fingers,  are  tricks  com- 
mon to  both. 

He  then  had  and  still  has  a  most  embarrassing 
habit  of  asking  many  questions;  embarrassing, 
sometimes,  because  the  questions  are  so  frank,  and 
sometimes  because  they  lay  bare  the  wide  ex- 
panse of  one's  own  ignorance. 

At  that  time,  although  in  his  twenty-first  year, 
82 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

this  lad  twice  had  been  made  a  question  in  the 
House  of  Commons. 

That  in  itself  had  rendered  him  conspicuous. 
When  you  consider  out  of  Great  Britain's  four 
hundred  million  subjects  how  many  live,  die,  and 
are  buried  without  at  any  age  having  drawn  down 
upon  themselves  the  anger  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, to  have  done  so  twice,  before  one  has 
passed  his  twenty-first  year,  seems  to  promise  a 
lurid  future. 

The  first  time  Churchill  disturbed  the  august 
assemblage  in  which  so  soon  he  was  to  become 
a  leader  was  when  he  "ragged"  a  brother  subal- 
tern named  Bruce  and  cut  up  his  saddle  and 
accoutrements.  The  second  time  was  when  he 
ran  away  to  Cuba  to  fight  with  the  Spaniards. 

After  this  campaign,  on  the  first  night  of  his 
arrival  in  London,  he  made  his  maiden  speech. 
He  delivered  it  in  a  place  of  less  dignity  than  the 
House  of  Commons,  but  one,  throughout  Great 
Britain  and  her  colonies,  as  widely  known  and  as 
well  supported.  This  was  the  Empire  Music 
Hall. 

At  the  time  Mrs.  Ormiston  Chant  had  raised 
objections  to  the  presence  in  the  Music  Hall  of 
certain  young  women,  and  had  threatened,  unless 
they  ceased  to  frequent  its  promenade,  to  have 

83 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

the  license  of  the  Music  Hall  revoked.  As  a  com- 
promise, the  management  ceased  selling  liquor, 
and  on  the  night  Churchill  visited  the  place  the 
bar  in  the  promenade  was  barricaded  with  scant- 
ling and  linen  sheets.  With  the  thirst  of  tropical 
Cuba  still  upon  him,  Churchill  asked  for  a  drink, 
which  was  denied  him,  and  the  crusade,  which  in 
his  absence  had  been  progressing  fiercely,  was 
explained.  Any  one  else  would  have  taken  no 
for  his  answer,  and  have  sought  elsewhere  for  his 
drink.  Not  so  Churchill.  What  he  did  is  inter- 
esting, because  it  was  so  extremely  characteristic. 
Now  he  would  not  do  it;  then  he  was  twenty- 
one. 

He  scrambled  to  the  velvet-covered  top  of  the 
railing  which  divides  the  auditorium  from  the 
promenade,  and  made  a  speech.  It  was  a  plea  in 
behalf  of  his  "Sisters,  the  Ladies  of  the  Empire 
Promenade." 

"Where,"  he  asked  of  the  ladies  themselves  and 
of  their  escorts  crowded  below  him  in  the  prome- 
nade, "does  the  Englishman  in  London  always 
find  a  welcome  ?  Where  does  he  first  go  when, 
battle-scarred  and  travel-worn,  he  reaches  home  ? 
Who  is  always  there  to  greet  him  with  a  smile, 
and  join  him  in  a  drink  ?  Who  is  ever  faithful, 
ever  true — the  Ladies  of  the  Empire  Promenade." 

84 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

The  laughter  and  cheers  that  greeted  this,  and 
the  tears  of  the  ladies  themselves,  naturally 
brought  the  performance  on  the  stage  to  a  stop, 
and  the  vast  audience  turned  in  the  seats  and 
boxes. 

They  saw  a  little  red-haired  boy  in  evening 
clothes,  balancing  himself  on  the  rail  of  the  bal- 
cony, and  around  him  a  great  crowd,  cheering, 
shouting,  and  bidding  him  "Go  on!'* 

Churchill  turned  with  delight  to  the  larger 
audience,  and  repeated  his  appeal.  The  house 
shook  with  laughter  and  applause. 

The  commissionaires  and  police  tried  to  reach 
him  and  a  good-tempered  but  very  determined 
mob  of  well-dressed  gentlemen  and  cheering  girls 
fought  them  back.  In  triumph  Churchill  ended 
his  speech  by  begging  his  hearers  to  give  "fair 
play"  to  the  women,  and  to  follow  him  in  a  charge 
upon  the  barricades. 

The  charge  was  instantly  made,  the  barricades 
were  torn  down,  and  the  terrified  management 
ordered  that  drink  be  served  to  its  victorious 
patrons. 

Shortly  after  striking  this  blow  for  the  liberty 
of  others,  Churchill  organized  a  dinner  which 
illustrated  the  direction  in  which  at  that  age  his 
mind  was  working,  and  showed  that  his  ambition 

85 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

was  already  abnormal.  The  dinner  was  given 
to  those  of  his  friends  and  acquaintances  who 
"were  under  twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  who  in 
twenty  years  would  control  the  destinies  of  the 
British  Empire/' 

As  one  over  the  age  limit,  or  because  he  did 
not  consider  me  an  empire-controlling  force,  on 
this  great  occasion,  I  was  permitted  to  be  present. 
But  except  that  the  number  of  incipient  empire- 
builders  was  very  great,  that  they  were  very  hap- 
py, and  that  save  the  host  himself  none  of  them 
took  his  idea  seriously,  I  would  not  call  it  an  even- 
ing of  historical  interest.  But  the  fact  is  interest- 
ing that  of  all  the  boys  present,  as  yet,  the  host 
seems  to  be  the  only  one  who  to  any  conspicuous 
extent  is  disturbing  the  destinies  of  Great  Britain. 
However,  the  others  can  reply  that  ten  of  the 
twenty  years  have  not  yet  passed. 

When  he  was  twenty-three  Churchill  obtained 
leave  of  absence  from  his  regiment,  and  as  there 
was  no  other  way  open  to  him  to  see  fighting,  as 
a  correspondent  he  joined  the  Malakand  Field 
Force  in  India. 

It  may  be  truthfully  said  that  by  his  presence  in 
that  frontier  war  he  made  it  and  himself  famous. 
His  book  on  that  campaign  is  his  best  piece  of  war 
reporting.  To  the  civilian  reader  it  has  all  the 

86 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

delight  of  one  of  Kipling's  Indian  stories,  and  to 
writers  on  military  subjects  it  is  a  model.  But  it 
is  a  model  very  few  can  follow,  and  which  Churchill 
himself  was  unable  to  follow,  for  the  reason  that 
only  once  is  it  given  a  man  to  be  twenty-three 
years  of  age. 

The  picturesque  hand-to-hand  fighting,  the 
night  attacks,  the  charges  up  precipitous  hills, 
the  retreats  made  carrying  the  wounded  under 
constant  fire,  which  he  witnessed  and  in  which 
he  bore  his  part,  he  never  again  can  see  with 
the  same  fresh  and  enthusiastic  eyes.  Then  it 
was  absolutely  new,  and  the  charm  of  the  book 
and  the  value  of  the  book  are  that  with  the  intol- 
erance of  youth  he  attacks  in  the  service  evils  that 
older  men  prefer  to  let  lie,  and  that  with  the  in- 
genuousness of  youth  he  tells  of  things  which  to 
the  veteran  have  become  unimportant,  or  which 
through  usage  he  is  no  longer  even  able  to  see. 

In  his  three  later  war  books,  the  wonder  of  it, 
the  horror  of  it,  the  quick  admiration  for  brave 
deeds  and  daring  men,  give  place,  in  "The  River 
War,"  to  the  critical  point  of  view  of  the  military 
expert,  and  in  his  two  books  on  the  Boer  war  to 
the  rapid  impressions  of  the  journalist.  In  these 
latter  books  he  tells  you  of  battles  he  has  seen,  in 
the  first  one  he  made  you  see  them. 

87 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

For  his  services  with  the  Malakand  Field 
Force  he  received  the  campaign  medal  with  clasp, 
and,  "in  despatches,"  Brigadier-General  Jeffreys 
praises  "the  courage  and  resolution  of  Lieutenant 
W.  L.  S.  Churchill,  Fourth  Hussars,  with  the 
force  as  correspondent  of  the  Pioneer" 

From  the  operations  around  Malakand,  he  at 
once  joined  Sir  William  Lockhart  as  orderly  offi- 
cer, and  with  the  Tirah  Expedition  went  through 
that  campaign. 

For  this  his  Indian  medal  gained  a  second 
clasp. 

This  was  in  the  early  part  of  1898.  In  spite 
of  the  time  taken  up  as  an  officer  and  as  a  cor- 
respondent, he  finished  his  book  on  the  Malakand 
Expedition  and  then,  as  it  was  evident  Kitchener 
would  soon  attack  Khartum,  he  jumped  across 
to  Egypt  and  again  as  a  correspondent  took  part 
in  the  advance  upon  that  city. 

Thus,  in  one  year,  he  had  seen  service  in  three 
campaigns. 

On  the  day  of  the  battle  his  luck  followed 
him.  Kitchener  had  attached  him  to  the  Twenty- 
first  Lancers,  and  it  will  be  remembered  the 
event  of  the  battle  was  the  charge  made  by  that 
squadron.  It  was  no  canter,  no  easy  "pig-stick- 
ing"; it  was  a  fight  to  get  in  and  a  fight  to  get 

88 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

out,  with  frenzied  followers  of  the  Khalifa  hang- 
ing to  the  bridle  reins,  hacking  at  the  horses'  ham- 
strings, and  slashing  and  firing  point-blank  at  the 
troopers.  Churchill  was  in  that  charge.  He  re- 
ceived the  medal  with  clasp. 

Then  he  returned  home  and  wrote  "The  River 
War."  This  book  is  the  last  word  on  the  cam- 
paigns up  the  Nile.  From  the  death  of  Gordon 
in  Khartum  to  the  capture  of  the  city  by  Kitch- 
ener, it  tells  the  story  of  the  many  gallant  fights, 
the  wearying  failures,  the  many  expeditions  into 
the  hot,  boundless  desert,  the  long,  slow  progress 
toward  the  final  winning  of  the  Sudan. 

The  book  made  a  distinct  sensation.  It  was 
a  work  that  one  would  expect  from  a  lieutenant- 
general,  when,  after  years  of  service  in  Egypt, 
he  laid  down  his  sword  to  pen  the  story  of  his  life's 
work.  From  a  Second  Lieutenant,  who  had  been 
on  the  Nile  hardly  long  enough  to  gain  the  desert 
tan,  it  was  a  revelation.  As  a  contribution  to 
military  history  it  was  so  valuable  that  for  the 
author  it  made  many  admirers,  but  on  account 
of  his  criticisms  of  his  superior  officers  it  gained 
him  even  more  enemies. 

This  is  a  specimen  of  the  kind  of  thing  that 
caused  the  retired  army  officer  to  sit  up  and 
choke  with  apoplexy: 

89 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

"General  Kitchener,  who  never  spares  himself, 
cares  little  for  others.  He  treated  all  men  like 
machines,  from  the  private  soldiers,  whose  sa- 
lutes he  disdained,  to  the  superior  officers,  whom 
he  rigidly  controlled.  The  comrade  who  had 
served  with  him  and  under  him  for  many  years, 
in  peace  and  peril,  was  flung  aside  as  soon  as  he 
ceased  to  be  of  use.  The  wounded  Egyptian  and 
even  the  wounded  British  soldier  did  not  excite 
his  interest." 

When  in  the  service  clubs  they  read  that,  the 
veterans  asked  each  other  their  favorite  question 
of  what  is  the  army  coming  to,  and  to  their  own 
satisfaction  answered  it  by  pointing  out  that  when 
a  lieutenant  of  twenty-four  can  reprimand  the 
commanding  general  the  army  is  going  to  the 
dogs. 

To  the  newspapers,  hundreds  of  them,  over 
their  own  signatures,  on  the  service  club  station- 
ery, wrote  violent,  furious  letters,  and  the  news- 
papers themselves,  besides  the  ordinary  reviews, 
gave  to  the  book  editorial  praise  and  editorial 
condemnation. 

Equally  disgusted  were  the  younger  officers 
of  the  service.  They  nicknamed  his  book  "A 
Subaltern's  Advice  to  Generals,"  and  called 
Churchill  himself  a  "Medal  Snatcher."  A  medal 

90 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

snatcher  is  an  officer  who,  whenever  there  is  a 
rumor  of  war,  leaves  his  men  to  the  care  of  any 
one,  and  through  influence  in  high  places  and 
for  the  sake  of  the  campaign  medal  has  himself 
attached  to  the  expeditionary  force.  But  Church- 
ill never  was  a  medal  hunter.  The  routine  of 
barrack  life  irked  him,  and  in  foreign  parts  he 
served  his  country  far  better  than  by  remaining 
at  home  and  inspecting  awkward  squads  and 
attending  guard  mount.  Indeed,  the  War  Office 
could  cover  with  medals  the  man  who  wrote  "The 
Story  of  the  Malakand  Field  Force"  and  "The 
River  War"  and  still  be  in  his  debt. 

In  October,  1898,  a  month  after  the  battle 
of  Omdurman,  Churchill  made  his  debut  as  a 
political  speaker  at  minor  meetings  in  Dover 
and  Rotherhithe.  History  does  not  record  that 
these  first  speeches  set  fire  to  the  Channel.  Dur- 
ing the  winter  he  finished  and  published  his 
"River  War,"  and  in  the  August  of  the  follow- 
ing summer,  1899,  at  a  by-election,  offered  him- 
self as  Member  of  Parliament  for  Oldham. 

In  the  Daily  Telegraph  his  letters  from  the 
three  campaigns  in  India  and  Egypt  had  made 
his  name  known,  and  there  was  a  general  desire 
to  hear  him  and  to  see  him.  In  one  who  had 
attacked  Kitchener  of  Khartum,  the  men  of 

91 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

Oldham  expected  to  find  a  stalwart  veteran, 
bearded,  and  with  a  voice  of  command.  When 
they  were  introduced  to  a  small  red-haired  boy 
with  a  lisp,  they  refused  to  take  him  seriously. 
In  England  youth  is  an  unpardonable  thing. 
Lately,  Curzon,  Churchill,  Edward  Grey,  Hugh 
Cecil,  and  others  have  made  it  less  reprehensible. 
But,  in  spite  of  a  vigorous  campaign,  in  which 
Lady  Randolph  took  an  active  part,  Oldham  de- 
cided it  was  not  ready  to  accept  young  Churchill 
for  a  member.  Later  he  was  Oldham's  only 
claim  to  fame. 

A  week  after  he  was  defeated  he  sailed  for  South 
Africa,  where  war  with  the  Boers  was  imminent. 
He  had  resigned  from  his  regiment  and  went 
south  as  war  correspondent  for  the  Morning  Post. 

Later  in  the  war  he  held  a  commission  as 
Lieutenant  in  the  South  African  Light  Horse, 
a  regiment  of  irregular  cavalry,  and  on  the  staffs 
of  different  generals  acted  as  galloper  and  aide- 
de-camp.  To  this  combination  of  duties,  which 
was  in  direct  violation  of  a  rule  of  the  War  Office, 
his  brother  officers  and  his  fellow  correspondents 
objected;  but,  as  in  each  of  his  other  campaigns 
he  had  played  this  dual  role,  the  press  censors 
considered  it  a  traditional  privilege,  and  winked 
at  it.  As  a  matter  of  record,  Churchill's  soldier 

92 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

ing  never  seemed  to  interfere  with  his  writing, 
nor,  in  a  fight,  did  his  duty  to  his  paper  ever  pre- 
vent him  from  mixing  in  as  a  belligerent. 

War  was  declared  October  Qth,  and  only  a 
month  later,  while  scouting  in  the  armored  train 
along  the  railroad  line  between  Pietermaritzburg 
and  Colenso,  the  cars  were  derailed  and  Churchill 
was  taken  prisoner. 

The  train  was  made  up  of  three  flat  cars,  two 
armored  cars,  and  between  them  the  engine, 
with  three  cars  coupled  to  the  cow-catcher  and 
two  to  the  tender. 

On  the  outward  trip  the  Boers  did  not  show 
themselves,  but  as  soon  as  the  English  passed 
Frere  station  they  rolled  a  rock  on  the  track  at 
a  point  where  it  was  hidden  by  a  curve.  On 
the  return  trip,  as  the  English  approached  this 
curve  the  Boers  opened  fire  with  artillery  and 
pompoms.  The  engineer,  in  his  eagerness  to 
escape,  rounded  the  curve  at  full  speed,  and,  as 
the  Boers  had  expected,  hit  the  rock.  The  three 
forward  cars  were  derailed,  and  one  of  them  was 
thrown  across  the  track,  thus  preventing  the  escape 
of  the  engine  and  the  two  rear  cars.  From  these 
Captain  Haldane,  who  was  in  command,  with  a 
detachment  of  the  Dublins,  kept  up  a  steady 
fire  on  the  enemy,  while  Churchill  worked  to  clear 

93 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

the  track.  To  assist  him  he  had  a  company  of 
Natal  volunteers,  and  those  who  had  not  run  away 
of  the  train  hands  and  break-down  crew. 

"We  were  not  long  left  in  the  comparative 
safety  of  a  railroad  accident,"  Churchill  writes 
to  his  paper.  "The  Boers'  guns,  swiftly  chang- 
ing their  position,  reopened  fire  from  a  distance 
of  thirteen  hundred  yards  before  any  one  had  got 
out  of  the  stage  of  exclamations.  The  tapping 
rifle-fire  spread  along  the  hills,  until  it  encircled 
the  wreckage  on  three  sides,  and  from  some  high 
ground  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  line  a  third  field- 
gun  came  into  action." 

For  Boer  marksmen  with  Mausers  and  pom- 
poms, a  wrecked  railroad  train  at  thirteen  hundred 
yards  was  as  easy  a  bull's-eye  as  the  hands  of  the 
first  baseman  to  the  pitcher,  and  while  the  en- 
gine butted  and  snorted  and  the  men  with  their 
bare  hands  tore  at  the  massive  beams  of  the 
freight-car,  the  bullets  and  shells  beat  about 
them. 

"  I  have  had  in  the  last  four  years  many  strange 
and  varied  experiences,"  continues  young  Church- 
ill, "but  nothing  was  so  thrilling  as  this;  to  wait 
and  struggle  among  these  clanging,  rending  iron 
boxes,  with  the  repeated  explosions  of  the  shells, 
the  noise  of  the  projectiles  striking  the  cars,  the 

04 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

hiss  as  they  passed  in  the  air,  the  grunting  and 
puffing  of  the  engine — poor,  tortured  thing,  ham- 
mered by  at  least  a  dozen  shells,  any  one  of  which, 
by  penetrating  the  boiler,  might  have  made  an 
end  of  all — the  expectation  of  destruction  as  a 
matter  of  course,  the  realization  of  powerlessness 
— all  this  for  seventy  minutes  by  the  clock,  with 
only  four  inches  of  twisted  iron  between  danger, 
captivity,  and  shame  on  one  side — and  freedom 
on  the  other." 

The  "protected"  train  had  proved  a  death- 
trap, and  by  the  time  the  line  was  clear  every 
fourth  man  was  killed  or  wounded.  Only  the 
engine,  with  the  more  severely  wounded  heaped 
in  the  cab  and  clinging  to  its  cow-catcher  and 
foot-rails,  made  good  its  escape.  Among  those 
left  behind,  a  Tommy,  without  authority,  raised 
a  handkerchief  on  his  rifle,  and  the  Boers  instantly 
ceased  firing  and  came  galloping  forward  to  ac- 
cept surrender.  There  was  a  general  stampede 
to  escape.  Seeing  that  Lieutenant  Franklin  was 
gallantly  trying  to  hold  his  men,  Churchill,  who 
was  safe  on  the  engine,  jumped  from  it  and  ran 
to  his  assistance.  Of  what  followed,  this  is  his 
own  account: 

"Scarcely  had  the  locomotive  left  me  than 
I  found  myself  alone  in  a  shallow  cutting,  and 

95 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

none  of  our  soldiers,  who  had  all  surrendered, 
to  be  seen.  Then  suddenly  there  appeared  on 
the  line  at  the  end  of  the  cutting  two  men  not 
in  uniform.  *  Plate-layers/  I  said  to  myself, 
and  then,  with  a  surge  of  realization,  'Boers/ 
My  mind  retains  a  momentary  impression  of  these 
tall  figures,  full  of  animated  movement,  clad  in 
dark  flapping  clothes,  with  slouch,  storm-driven 
hats,  posing  their  rifles  hardly  a  hundred  yards 
away.  I  turned  and  ran  between  the  rails  of  the 
track,  and  the  only  thought  I  achieved  was  this: 
'Boer  marksmanship/ 

"Two  bullets  passed,  both  within  a  foot,  one 
on  either  side.  I  flung  myself  against  the  banks 
of  the  cutting.  But  they  gave  no  cover.  Another 
glance  at  the  figures;  one  was  now  kneeling  to 
aim.  Again  I  darted  forward.  Again  two  soft 
kisses  sucked  in  the  air,  but  nothing  struck  me. 
I  must  get  out  of  the  cutting — that  damnable 
corridor.  I  scrambled  up  the  bank.  The  earth 
sprang  up  beside  me,  and  a  bullet  touched  my 
hand,  but  outside  the  cutting  was  a  tiny  depres- 
sion. I  crouched  in  this,  struggling  to  get  my 
wind.  On  the  other  side  of  the  railway  a  horse- 
man galloped  up,  shouting  to  me  and  waving  his 
hand.  He  was  scarcely  forty  yards  off.  With  a 
rifle  I  could  have  killed  him  easily.  I  knew 

96 


Winston  Churchill. 

In  the  uniform  of  lieutenant  of  South  African  Light  Horse. 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

nothing  of  the  white  flag,  and  the  bullets  had 
made  me  savage.  I  reached  down  for  my  Mauser 
pistol.  I  had  left  it  in  the  cab  of  the  engine.  Be- 
tween me  and  the  horseman  there  was  a  wire 
fence.  Should  I  continue  to  fly  ?  The  idea  of 
another  shot  at  such  a  short  range  decided  me. 
Death  stood  before  me,  grim  and  sullen;  Death 
without  his  light-hearted  companion,  Chance. 
So  I  held  up  my  hand,  and  like  Mr.  Jorrock's 
foxes,  cried  'CapivyP  Then  I  was  herded  with 
the  other  prisoners  in  a  miserable  group,  and 
about  the  same  time  I  noticed  that  my  hand  was 
bleeding,  and  it  began  to  pour  with  rain. 

"Two  days  before  I  had  written  to  an  offi- 
cer at  home:  'There  has  been  a  great  deal  too 
much  surrendering  in  this  war,  and  I  hope  people 
who  do  so  will  not  be  encouraged/  ' 

With  other  officers,  Churchill  was  imprisoned 
in  the  State  Model  Schools,  situated  in  the  heart  of 
Pretoria.  It  was  distinctly  characteristic  that  on 
the  very  day  of  his  arrival  he  began  to  plan  to 
escape. 

Toward  this  end  his  first  step  was  to  lose  his 
campaign  hat,  which  he  recognized  was  too  ob- 
viously the  hat  of  an  English  officer.  The  burgher 
to  whom  he  gave  money  to  purchase  him  another 
innocently  brought  him  a  Boer  sombrero. 

97 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

Before  his  chance  to  escape  came  a  month 
elapsed,  and  the  opportunity  that  then  offered 
was  less  an  opportunity  to  escape  than  to  get 
himself  shot. 

The  State  Model  Schools  were  surrounded  by 
the  children's  playgrounds,  penned  in  by  a  high 
wall,  and  at  night,  while  they  were  used  as  a 
prison,  brilliantly  lighted  by  electric  lights.  After 
many  nights  of  observation,  ^Churchill  discovered 
that  while  the  sentries  were  pacing  their  beats 
there  was  a  moment  when  to  them  a  certain  por- 
tion of  the  wall  was  in  darkness.  This  was  due  to 
cross-shadows  cast  by  the  electric  lights.  On 
the  other  side  of  this  wall  there  was  a  private 
house  set  in  a  garden  filled  with  bushes.  Beyond 
this  was  the  open  street. 

To  scale  the  wall  was  not  difficult;  the  real 
danger  lay  in  the  fact  that  at  no  time  were  the 
sentries  farther  away  than  fifteen  yards,  and 
the  chance  of  being  shot  by  one  or  both  of  them 
was  excellent.  To  a  brother  officer  Churchill 
confided  his  purpose,  and  together  they  agreed 
that  some  night  when  the  sentries  had  turned  from 
the  dark  spot  on  the  wall  they  would  scale  it  and 
drop  among  the  bushes  in  the  garden.  After 
they  reached  the  garden,  should  they  reach  it  alive, 
what  they  were  to  do  they  did  not  know.  How 

98 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

they  were  to  proceed  through  the  streets  and  out 
of  the  city,  how  they  were  to  pass  unchallenged 
under  its  many  electric  lights  and  before  the  illu- 
minated shop  windows,  how  to  dodge  patrols, 
and  how  to  find  their  way  through  two  hundred 
and  eighty  miles  of  a  South  African  wilderness, 
through  an  utterly  unfamiliar,  unfriendly,  and 
sparsely  settled  country  into  Portuguese  territory 
and  the  coast,  they  left  to  chance.  But  with  luck 
they  hoped  to  cover  the  distance  in  a  fortnight, 
begging  corn  at  the  Kaffir  kraals,  sleeping  by 
day,  and  marching  under  cover  of  the  darkness. 

They  agreed  to  make  the  attempt  on  the  nth 
of  December,  but  on  that  night  the  sentries  did  not 
move  from  the  only  part  of  the  wall  that  was  in 
shadow.  On  the  night  following,  at  the  last 
moment,  something  delayed  Churchill's  compan- 
ion, and  he  essayed  the  adventure  alone.  He 
writes:  "Tuesday,  the  I2th!  Anything  was  bet- 
ter than  further  suspense.  Again  night  came. 
Again  the  dinner  bell  sounded.  Choosing  my 
opportunity,  I  strolled  across  the  quadrangle  and 
secreted  myself  in  one  of  the  offices.  Through  a 
chink  I  watched  the  sentries.  For  half  an  hour 
they  remained  stolid  and  obstructive.  Then  sud- 
denly one  turned  and  walked  up  to  his  comrade 
and  they  began  to  talk.  Their  backs  were  turned. 

99 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

I  darted  out  of  my  hiding-place  and  ran  to  the 
wall,  seized  the  top  with  my  hands  and  drew 
myself  up.  Twice  I  let  myself  down  again  in 
sickly  hesitation,  and  then  with  a  third  resolve 
scrambled  up.  The  top  was  flat.  Lying  on  it, 
I  had  one  parting  glimpse  of  the  sentries,  still 
talking,  still  with  their  backs  turned,  but,  I  re- 
peat, still  fifteen  yards  away.  Then  I  lowered 
myself  into  the  adjoining  garden  and  crouched 
among  the  shrubs.  I  was  free.  The  first  step 
had  been  taken,  and  it  was  irrevocable." 

Churchill  discovered  that  the  house  into  the 
garden  of  which  he  had  so  unceremoniously  in- 
troduced himself  was  brilliantly  lighted,  and  that 
the  owner  was  giving  a  party.  At  one  time  two 
of  the  guests  walked  into  the  garden  and  stood, 
smoking  and  chatting,  in  the  path  within  a  few 
yards  of  him. 

Thinking  his  companion  might  yet  join  him, 
for  an  hour  he  crouched  in  the  bushes,  until 
from  the  other  side  of  the  wall  he  heard  the 
voices  of  his  friend  and  of  another  officer. 

"It's  all  up!"  his  friend  whispered.  Churchill 
coughed  tentatively.  The  two  voices  drew  nearer. 
To  confuse  the  sentries,  should  they  be  listening, 
the  one  officer  talked  nonsense,  laughed  loudly, 
and  quoted  Latin  phrases,  while  the  other,  in  a 

IOO 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

low  and  distinct  voice,  said:  "I  cannot  get  out. 
The  sentry  suspects.  It's  all  up.  Can  you  get 
back  again  ? " 

To  go  back  was  impossible.  Churchill  now 
felt  that  in  any  case  he  was  sure  to  be  recaptured, 
and  decided  he  would,  as  he  expresses  it,  at  least 
have  a  run  for  his  money. 

"I  shall  go  on  alone,"  he  whispered. 

He  heard  the  footsteps  of  his  two  friends  move 
away  from  him  across  the  play  yard.  At  the 
same  moment  he  stepped  boldly  out  into  the  gar- 
den and,  passing  the  open  windows  of  the  house, 
walked  down  the  gravel  path  to  the  street.  Not 
five  yards  from  the  gate  stood  a  sentry.  Most 
of  those  guarding  the  school-house  knew  him  by 
sight,  but  Churchill  did  not  turn  his  head,  and 
whether  the  sentry  recognized  him  or  not,  he  could 
not  tell. 

For  a  hundred  feet  he  walked  as  though  on  ice, 
inwardly  shrinking  as  he  waited  for  the  sharp 
challenge,  and  the  rattle  of  the  Mauser  thrown  to 
the  "Ready."  His  nerves  were  leaping,  his  heart 
in  his  throat,  his  spine  of  water.  And  then,  as  he 
continued  to  advance,  and  still  no  tumult  pursued 
him,  he  quickened  his  pace  and  turned  into  one 
of  the  main  streets  of  Pretoria.  The  sidewalks 
were  crowded  with  burghers,  but  no  one  noticed 

101 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

him.  This  was  due  probably  to  the  fact  that  the 
Boers  wore  no  distinctive  uniform,  and  that  with 
them  in  their  commandoes  were  many  English 
Colonials  who  wore  khaki  riding  breeches,  and 
many  Americans,  French,  Germans,  and  Rus- 
sians, in  every  fashion  of  semi-uniform. 

If  observed,  Churchill  was  mistaken  for  one 
of  these,  and  the  very  openness  of  his  movements 
saved  him  from  suspicion. 

Straight  through  the  town  he  walked  until 
he  reached  the  suburbs,  the  open  veldt,  and  a 
railroad  track.  As  he  had  no  map  or  compass 
he  knew  this  must  be  his  only  guide,  but  he  knew 
also  that  two  railroads  left  Pretoria,  the  one  along 
which  he  had  been  captured,  to  Pietermaritzburg, 
and  the  other,  the  one  leading  to  the  coast  and 
freedom.  Which  of  the  two  this  one  was  he  had 
no  idea,  but  he  took  his  chance,  and  a  hundred 
yards  beyond  a  station  waited  for  the  first  out- 
going train.  About  midnight,  a  freight  stopped 
at  the  station,  and  after  it  had  left  it  and  before  it 
had  again  gathered  headway,  Churchill  swung  him- 
self up  upon  it,  and  stretched  out  upon  a  pile  of 
coal.  Throughout  the  night  the  train  continued 
steadily  toward  the  east,  and  so  told  him  that  it 
was  the  one  he  wanted,  and  that  he  was  on  his 
way  to  the  neutral  territory  of  Portugal. 

102 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

Fearing  the  daylight,  just  before  the  sun  rose, 
as  the  train  was  pulling  up  a  steep  grade,  he 
leaped  off  into  some  bushes.  All  that  day  he  lay 
hidden,  and  the  next  night  he  walked.  He  made 
but  little  headway.  As  all  stations  and  bridges 
were  guarded,  he  had  to  make  long  detours,  and 
the  tropical  moonlight  prevented  him  from  cross- 
ing in  the  open.  In  this  way,  sleeping  by  day, 
walking  by  night,  begging  food  from  the  Kaffirs, 
five  days  passed. 

Meanwhile,  his  absence  had  been  at  once  dis- 
covered, and,  by  the  Boers,  every  effort  was  being 
made  to  retake  him.  Telegrams  giving  his  de- 
scription were  sent  along  both  railways,  three 
thousand  photographs  of  him  were  distributed, 
each  car  of  every  train  was  searched,  and  in  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  Transvaal  men  who  resembled 
him  were  being  arrested.  It  was  said  he  had 
escaped  dressed  as  a  woman;  in  the  uniform  of  a 
Transvaal  policeman  whom  he  had  bribed;  that 
he  had  never  left  Pretoria,  and  that  in  the  disguise 
of  a  waiter  he  was  concealed  in  the  house  of  a 
British  sympathizer.  On  the  strength  of  this 
rumor  the  houses  of  all  suspected  persons  were 
searched. 

In  the  Volksstem  it  was  pointed  out  as  a  signifi- 
cant fact  that  a  week  before  his  escape  Churchill 

103 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

had  drawn  from  the  library  Mill's  "Essay  on 
Liberty." 

In  England  and  over  all  British  South  Africa 
the  escape  created  as  much  interest  as  it  did  in 
Pretoria.  Because  the  attempt  showed  pluck, 
and  because  he  had  outwitted  the  enemy,  Churchill 
for  the  time  became  a  sort  of  popular  hero,  and  to 
his  countrymen  his  escape  gave  as  much  pleasure 
as  it  was  a  cause  of  chagrin  to  the  Boers. 

But  as  days  passed  and  nothing  was  heard  of 
him,  it  was  feared  he  had  lost  himself  in  the 
Machadodorp  Mountains,  or  had  succumbed  to 
starvation,  or,  in  the  jungle  toward  the  coast,  to 
fever,  and  congratulations  gave  way  to  anxiety. 

The  anxiety  was  justified,  for  at  this  time 
Churchill  was  in  a  very  bad  way.  During  the 
month  in  prison  he  had  obtained  but  little  ex- 
ercise. The  lack  of  food  and  of  water,  the  cold 
by  night  and  the  terrific  heat  by  day,  the  long 
stumbling  marches  in  the  darkness,  the  mental 
effect  upon  an  extremely  nervous,  high-strung 
organization  of  being  hunted,  and  of  having  to 
hide  from  his  fellow  men,  had  worn  him  down  to 
a  condition  almost  of  collapse. 

Even  though  it  were  neutral  soil,  in  so  exhausted 
a  state  he  dared  not  venture  into  the  swamps  and 
waste  places  of  the  Portuguese  territory;  and,  sick 

104 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

at  heart  as  well  as  sick  in  body,  he  saw  no  choice 
left  him  save  to  give  himself  up. 

But  before  doing  so  he  carefully  prepared  a 
tale  which,  although  most  improbable,  he  hoped 
might  still  conceal  his  identity  and  aid  him  to 
escape  by  train  across  the  border. 

One  night  after  days  of  wandering  he  found 
himself  on  the  outskirts  of  a  little  village  near 
the  boundary  line  of  the  Transvaal  and  Portu- 
guese territory.  Utterly  unable  to  proceed  fur- 
ther, he  crawled  to  the  nearest  zinc-roofed  shack, 
and,  fully  prepared  to  surrender,  knocked  at  the 
door.  It  was  opened  by  a  rough-looking,  bearded 
giant,  the  first  white  man  to  whom  in  many  days 
Churchill  had  dared  address  himself. 

To  him,  without  hope,  he  feebly  stammered 
forth  the  speech  he  had  rehearsed.  The  man 
listened  with  every  outward  mark  of  disbelief. 
At  Churchill  himself  he  stared  with  open  sus- 
picion. Suddenly  he  seized  the  boy  by  the  shoul- 
der, drew  him  inside  the  hut,  and  barred  the  door. 

"You  needn't  lie  to  me,"  he  said.  "You 
are  Winston  Churchill,  and  I — am  the  only 
Englishman  in  this  village." 

The  rest  of  the  adventure  was  comparatively 
easy.  The  next  night  his  friend  in  need,  an 
engineer  named  Howard,  smuggled  Churchill 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

into  a  freight-car,  and  hid  him  under  sacks  of 
some  soft  merchandise. 

At  Komatie-Poort,  the  station  on  the  border, 
for  eighteen  hours  the  car  in  which  Churchill 
lay  concealed  was  left  in  the  sun  on  a  siding, 
and  before  it  again  started  it  was  searched,  but 
the  man  who  was  conducting  the  search  lifted 
only  the  top  layer  of  sacks,  and  a  few  minutes 
later  Churchill  heard  the  hollow  roar  of  the  car 
as  it  passed  over  the  bridge,  and  knew  that  he 
was  across  the  border. 

Even  then  he  took  no  chances,  and  for  two  days 
more  lay  hidden  at  the  bottom  of  the  car. 

When  at  last  he  arrived  in  Lorenzo  Marques 
he  at  once  sought  out  the  English  Consul,  who, 
after  first  mistaking  him  for  a  stoker  from  one  of 
the  ships  in  the  harbor,  gave  him  a  drink,  a  bath, 
and  a  dinner. 

As  good  luck  would  have  it,  the  Induna  was 
leaving  that  night  for  Durban,  and,  escorted 
by  a  body-guard  of  English  residents  armed  with 
revolvers,  and  who  were  taking  no  chances  of  his 
recapture  by  the  Boer  agents,  he  was  placed  safely 
on  board.  Two  days  later  he  arrived  at  Durban, 
where  he  was  received  by  the  Mayor,  the  populace, 
and  a  brass  band  playing:  "Britons  Never, 
Never,  Never  shall  be  Slaves!" 

106 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

For  the  next  month  Churchill  was  bombarded 
by  letters  and  telegrams  from  every  part  of  the 
globe;  some  invited  him  to  command  filibuster- 
ing expeditions,  others  sent  him  woollen  comfort- 
ers, some  forwarded  photographs  of  himself  to  be 
signed,  others  photographs  of  themselves,  possibly 
to  be  admired,  others  sent  poems,  and  some  bot- 
tles of  whiskey. 

One  admirer  wrote:  "My  congratulations  on 
your  wonderful  and  glorious  deeds,  which  will 
send  such  a  thrill  of  pride  and  enthusiasm  through 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  of  America, 
that  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  will  be  irresistible." 

Lest  so  large  an  order  as  making  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  irresistible  might  turn  the  head  of 
a  subaltern,  an  antiseptic  cablegram  was  also 
sent  him,  from  London,  reading: 

"Best  friends  here  hope  you  won't  go  making 
further  ass  of  yourself. 

"  McNEILL." 

One  day  in  camp  we  counted  up  the  price 
per  word  of  this  cablegram,  and  Churchill  was 
delighted  to  find  that  it  must  have  cost  the  man 
who  sent  it  five  pounds. 

On  the  day  of  his  arrival  in  Durban,  with 
the  cheers  still  in  the  air,  Churchill  took  the  first 

107 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

train  to  "the  front,"  then  at  Colenso.  Another 
man  might  have  lingered.  After  a  month's  im- 
prisonment and  the  hardships  of  the  escape,  he 
might  have  been  excused  for  delaying  twenty-four 
hours  to  taste  the  sweets  of  popularity  and  the 
flesh-pots  of  the  Queen  Hotel.  But  if  the  reader 
has  followed  this  brief  biography  he  will  know 
that  to  have  done  so  would  have  been  out  of  the 
part.  This  characteristic  of  Churchill's  to  get  on 
to  the  next  thing  explains  his  success.  He  has  no 
time  to  waste  on  post-mortems,  he  takes  none  to 
rest  on  his  laurels. 

As  a  war  correspondent  and  officer  he  con- 
tinued with  Buller  until  the  relief  of  Ladysmith, 
and  with  Roberts  until  the  fall  of  Pretoria.  He 
was  in  many  actions,  in  all  the  big  engagements, 
and  came  out  of  the  war  with  another  medal  and 
clasps  for  six  battles. 

On  his  return  to  London  he  spent  the  sum- 
mer finishing  his  second  book  on  the  war,  and  in 
October  at  the  general  election  as  a  "khaki" 
candidate,  as  those  were  called  who  favored  the 
war,  again  stood  for  Oldham.  This  time,  with 
his  war  record  to  help  him,  he  wrested  from  the 
Liberals  one  of  Oldham's  two  seats.  He  had  been 
defeated  by  thirteen  hundred  votes;  he  was  elected 
by  a  majority  of  two  hundred  and  twenty-seven. 

108 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

The  few  months  that  intervened  between  his 
election  and  the  opening  of  the  new  Parliament 
were  snatched  by  Churchill  for  a  lecturing  tour 
at  home,  and  in  the  United  States  and  Canada. 
His  subject  was  the  war  and  his  escape  from  Pre- 
toria. 

When  he  came  to  this  country  half  of  the  people 
here  were  in  sympathy  with  the  Boers,  and  did 
not  care  to  listen  to  what  they  supposed  would  be 
a  strictly  British  version  of  the  war.  His  mana- 
ger, without  asking  permission  of  those  whose 
names  he  advertised,  organized  for  Churchill's 
first  appearance  in  various  cities,  different  recep- 
tion committees. 

Some  of  those  whose  names,  without  their 
consent,  were  used  for  these  committees,  wrote 
indignantly  to  the  papers,  saying  that  while 
for  Churchill,  personally,  they  held  every  respect, 
they  objected  to  being  used  to  advertise  an  anti- 
Boer  demonstration. 

While  this  was  no  fault  of  Churchill's,  who, 
until  he  reached  this  country  knew  nothing  of 
it,  it  was  neither  for  him  nor  for  the  success  of 
his  tour  the  best  kind  of  advance  work. 

During  the  fighting  to  relieve  Ladysmith,  with 
General  Buller's  force,  Churchill  and  I  had  again 
been  together,  and  later  when  I  joined  the  Boer 

109 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

army,  at  the  Zand  River  Battle',  the  army  with 
which  he  was  a  correspondent  had  chased  the 
army  with  which  I  was  a  correspondent,  forty  miles. 
I  had  been  one  of  those  who  refused  to  act  on 
his  reception  committee,  and  he  had  come  to  this 
country  with  a  commission  from  twenty  brother 
officers  to  shoot  me  on  sight.  But  in  his  lecture 
he  was  using  the  photographs  I  had  taken  of 
the  scene  of  his  escape,  and  which  I  had  sent 
him  from  Pretoria  as  a  souvenir,  and  when  he 
arrived  I  was  at  the  hotel  to  welcome  him,  and 
that  same  evening  three  hours  after  midnight  he 
came,  in  a  blizzard,  pounding  at  our  door  for 
food  and  drink.  What  is  a  little  thing  like  a  war 
between  friends  ? 

During  his  "tour,"  except  of  hotels,  parlor- 
cars,  and  "Lyceums,"  he  saw  very  little  of  this 
country  or  of  its  people,  and  they  saw  very  little 
of  him.  On  the  trip,  which  lasted  about  two 
months,  he  cleared  ten  thousand  dollars.  This, 
to  a  young  man  almost  entirely  dependent  for  an 
income  upon  his  newspaper  work  and  the  sale 
of  his  books,  nearly  repaid  him  for  the  two  months 
of  "one  night  stands."  On  his  return  to  London 
he  took  his  seat  in  the  new  Parliament. 

It  was  a  coincidence  that  he  entered  Parlia- 
ment at  the  same  age  as  did  his  father.  With 

no 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

two  other  members,  one  born  six  days  earlier  than 
himself,  he  enjoyed  the  distinction  of  being  among 
the  three  youngest  members  of  the  new  House. 

The  fact  did  not  seem  to  appall  him.  In  the 
House  it  is  a  tradition  that  young  and  ambi- 
tious members  sit  "below"  the  gangway;  the 
more  modest  and  less  assured  are  content  to 
place  themselves  "above"  it,  at  a  point  farthest 
removed  from  the  leaders. 

On  the  day  he  was  sworn  in  there  was  much 
curiosity  to  see  where  Churchill  would  elect 
to  sit.  In  his  own  mind  there  was  apparently 
no  doubt.  After  he  had  taken  the  oath,  signed 
his  name,  and  shaken  the  hand  of  the  Speaker, 
without  hesitation  he  seated  himself  on  the 
bench  next  to  the  Ministry.  Ten  minutes  later, 
so  a  newspaper  of  the  day  describes  it,  he  had 
cocked  his  hat  over  his  eyes,  shoved  his  hands 
into  his  trousers  pockets,  and  was  lolling  back 
eying  the  veterans  of  the  House  with  critical  dis- 
approval. 

His  maiden  speech  was  delivered  in  May, 
1901,  in  reply  to  David  Lloyd  George,  who  had 
attacked  the  conduct  of  British  soldiers  in  South 
Africa.  Churchill  defended  them,  and  in  a  man- 
ner that  from  all  sides  gained  him  honest  admira- 
tion. In  the  course  of  the  debate  he  produced 

in 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

and  read  a  strangely  apropos  letter  which,  fifteen 
years  before,  had  been  written  by  his  father  to 
Lord  Salisbury.  His  adroit  use  of  this  filled  H. 
W.  Massingham,  the  editor  of  the  Daily  News, 
with  enthusiasm.  Nothing  in  parliamentary  tac- 
tics, he  declared,  since  Mr.  Gladstone  died,  had 
been  so  clever.  He  proclaimed  that  Churchill 
would  be  Premier.  John  Dillon,  the  Nationalist 
leader,  said  he  never  before  had  seen  a  young 
man,  by  means  of  his  maiden  effort,  spring  into 
the  front  rank  of  parliamentary  speakers.  He 
promised  that  the  Irish  members  would  ungrudg- 
ingly testify  to  his  ability  and  honesty  of  purpose. 
Among  others  to  at  once  recognize  the  rising  star 
was  T.  P.  O'Connor,  himself  for  many  years  of 
the  parliamentary  firmament  one  of  the  brightest 
stars.  In  M.  A.  P.  he  wrote:  "I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  the  dash  of  American  blood  which  he 
has  from  his  mother  has  been  an  improvement 
on  the  original  stock,  and  that  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill  may  turn  out  to  be  a  stronger  and  abler 
politician  than  his  father." 

It  was  all  a  part  of  Churchill's  "luck"  that 
when  he  entered  Parliament  the  subject  in  debate 
was  the  conduct  of  the  war. 

Even  in  those  first  days  of  his  career  in  the 
House,  in  debates  where  angels  feared  to  tread, 

112 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

he  did  not  hesitate  to  rush  in,  but  this  subject  was 
one  on  which  he  spoke  with  knowledge.  Over 
the  older  men  who  were  forced  to  quote  from  hear- 
say or  from  what  they  had  read,  Churchill  had  the 
tremendous  advantage  of  being  able  to  protest: 
"You  only  read  of  that.  I  was  there.  I  saw  it." 

In  the  House  he  became  at  once  one  of  the  con- 
spicuous and  picturesque  figures,  one  dear  to  the 
heart  of  the  caricaturist,  and  one  from  the  stran- 
gers' gallery  most  frequently  pointed  out.  He  was 
called  "the  spoiled  child  of  the  House,"  and  there 
were  several  distinguished  gentlemen  who  regretted 
they  were  forced  to  spare  the  rod.  Broderick,  the 
Secretary  for  War,  was  one  of  these.  Of  him  and 
of  his  recruits  in  South  Africa,  Churchill  spoke 
with  the  awful  frankness  of  the  enfant  terrible. 
And  although  he  addressed  them  more  with  sorrow 
than  with  anger,  to  Balfour  and  Chamberlain  he 
daily  administered  advice  and  reproof,  while  mere 
generals  and  field-marshals,  like  Kitchener  and 
Roberts,  blushing  under  new  titles,  were  held  up 
for  public  reproof  and  briefly  but  severely  chas- 
tened. Nor,  when  he  saw  Lord  Salisbury  going 
astray,  did  he  hesitate  in  his  duty  to  the  country, 
but  took  the  Prime  Minister  by  the  hand  and 
gently  instructed  him  in  the  way  he  should  go. 

This  did  not  tend  to  make  him  popular,  but 
"3 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

in  spite  of  his  unpopularity,  in  his  speeches  against 
national  extravagancies  he  made  so  good  a  fight 
that  he  forced  the  Government,  unwillingly,  to 
appoint  a  committee  to  investigate  the  need  of 
economy.  For  a  beginner  this  was  a  distinct 
triumph. 

With  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  Lord  Percy,  Ian  Mal- 
colm, and  other  clever  young  men,  he  formed  in- 
side the  Conservative  Party  a  little  group  that 
in  its  obstructive  and  independent  methods  was 
not  unlike  the  Fourth  Party  of  his  father.  From 
its  leader  and  its  filibustering,  guerilla-like  tactics 
the  men  who  composed  it  were  nicknamed  the 
"Hughligans."  The  Hughligans  were  the  most 
active  critics  of  the  Ministry  and  of  all  in  their 
own  party,  and  as  members  of  the  Free  Food 
League  they  bitterly  attacked  the  fiscal  proposals 
of  Mr.  Chamberlain.  When  Balfour  made  Cham- 
berlain's fight  for  fair  trade,  or  for  what  virtually 
was  protection,  a  measure  of  the  Conservatives, 
the  lines  of  party  began  to  break,  and  men  were 
no  longer  Conservatives  or  Liberals,  but  Protec- 
tionists or  Free  Traders. 

Against  this  Churchill  daily  protested,  against 
Chamberlain,  against  his  plan,  against  that  plan 
being  adopted  by  the  Tory  Party.  By  tradition, 
by  inheritance,  by  instinct,  Churchill  was  a  Tory. 

114 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

"I  am  a  Tory,"  he  said,  "and  I  have  as  much 
right  in  the  party  as  has  anybody  else,  certainly 
as  much  as  certain  people  from  Birmingham. 
They  can't  turn  us  out,  and  we,  the  Tory  Free 
Traders,  have  as  much  right  to  dictate  the  policy 
of  the  Conservative  Party  as  have  any  reactionary 
Fair  Traders."  In  1904  the  Conservative  Party 
already  recognized  Churchill  as  one  working  out- 
side the  breastworks.  Just  before  the  Easter 
vacation  of  that  year,  when  he  rose  to  speak  a  re- 
markable demonstration  was  made  against  him 
by  his  Unionist  colleagues,  all  of  them  rising  and 
leaving  the  House. 

To  the  Liberals  who  remained  to  hear  him 
he  stated  that  if  to  his  constituents  his  opinions 
were  obnoxious,  he  was  ready  to  resign  his  seat. 
It  then  was  evident  he  would  go  over  to  the  Liberal 
Party.  Some  thought  he  foresaw  which  way  the 
tidal  wave  was  coming,  and  to  being  slapped  down 
on  the  beach  and  buried  in  the  sand,  he  preferred 
to  be  swept  forward  on  its  crest.  Others  believed 
he  left  the  Conservatives  because  he  could  not 
honestly  stomach  the  taxed  food  offered  by  Mr. 
Chamberlain. 

In  any  event,  if  he  were  to  be  blamed  for 
changing  from  one  party  to  the  other,  he  was 
only  following  the  distinguished  example  set  him 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

by  Gladstone,  Disraeli,  Harcourt,  and  his  own 
father. 

It  was  at  the  time  of  this  change  that  he  was 
called  "the  best  hated  man  in  England,"  but 
the  Liberals  welcomed  him  gladly,  and  the 
National  Liberal  Club  paid  him  the  rare  com- 
pliment of  giving  in  his  honor  a  banquet.  There 
were  present  two  hundred  members.  Up  to  that 
time  this  dinner  was  the  most  marked  testimony 
to  his  importance  in  the  political  world.  It  was 
about  then,  a  year  since,  that  he  prophesied: 
"Within  nine  months  there  will  come  such  a  tide 
and  deluge  as  will  sweep  through  England  and 
Scotland,  and  completely  wash  out  and  effect  a 
much-needed  spring  cleaning  in  Downing  Street." 

When  the  deluge  came,  at  Manchester,  Mr. 
Balfour  was  defeated,  and  Churchill  was  victori- 
ous, and  when  the  new  Government  was  formed 
the  tidal  wave  landed  Churchill  in  the  office  of 
Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies. 

While  this  is  being  written  the  English  papers 
say  that  within  a  month  he  again  will  be  pro- 
moted. For  this  young  man  of  thirty  the  only 
promotion  remaining  is  a  position  in  the  Cabinet, 
in  which  august  body  men  of  fifty  are  considered 
young. 

His  is  a  picturesque  career.  Of  any  man  of 
116 


Winston  Spencer  Churchill 

his  few  years  speaking  our  language,  his  career  is 
probably  the  most  picturesque.  And  that  he  is 
half  an  American  gives  all  of  us  an  excuse  to 
pretend  we  share  in  his  successes. 


117 


CAPTAIN 
PHILO    NORTON    McGIFFIN 


CAPTAIN   PHILO  NORTON  McGIFFIN 

IN  the  Chinese-Japanese  War  the  battle  of 
the  Yalu  was  the  first  battle  fought  between 
warships  of  modern  make,  and,  except  on  paper, 
neither  the  men  who  made  them  nor  the  men 
who  fought  them  knew  what  the  ships  could  do, 
or  what  they  might  not  do.  For  years  every  naval 
power  had  been  building  these  new  engines  of 
war,  and  in  the  battle  which  was  to  test  them  the 
whole  world  was  interested.  But  in  this  battle 
Americans  had  a  special  interest,  a  human,  family 
interest,  for  the  reason  that  one  of  the  Chinese 
squadron,  which  was  matched  against  some  of 
the  same  vessels  of  Japan  which  lately  swept  those 
of  Russia  from  the  sea,  was  commanded  by  a 
young  graduate  of  the  American  Naval  Academy. 
This  young  man,  who,  at  the  time  of  the  battle  of 
the  Yalu,  was  thirty-three  years  old,  was  Captain 
Philo  Norton  McGifHn.  So  it  appears  that  five 
years  before  our  fleet  sailed  to  victory  in  Manila 
Bay  another  graduate  of  Annapolis,  and  one 
twenty  years  younger  than  in  1898  was  Admiral 

121 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

Dewey,  had  commanded  in  action  a  modern 
battleship,  which,  in  tonnage,  in  armament,  and 
in  the  number  of  the  ships'  company,  far  out- 
classed Dewey's  Olympia. 

McGiffin,  who  was  born  on  December  13, 
1860,  came  of  fighting  stock.  Back  in  Scot- 
land the  family  is  descended  from  the  Clan  Mac- 
Gregor  and  the  Clan  MacAIpine. 

"These  are  Clan-Alpine's  warriors  true, 
And,  Saxon — I  am  Roderick  Dhu." 

McGiffin's  great-grandfather,  born  in  Scotland, 
emigrated  to  this  country  and  settled  in  "Little 
Washington,"  near  Pittsburg,  Pa.  In  the  Revolu- 
tionary War  he  was  a  soldier.  Other  relatives 
fought  in  the  War  of  1812,  one  of  them  holding 
a  commission  as  major.  McGiffin's  own  father 
was  Colonel  Norton  McGiffin,  who  served  in  the 
Mexican  War,  and  in  the  Civil  War  was  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel of  the  Eighty-fifth  Pennsylvania 
Volunteers.  So  McGiffin  inherited  his  love  for 
arms. 

In  Washington  he  went  to  the  high  school  and 
at  the  Washington  Jefferson  College  had  passed 
through  his  freshman  year.  But  the  honors  that 
might  accrue  to  him  if  he  continued  to  live  on  in 
the  quiet  and  pretty  old  town  of  Washington  did 

122 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

not  tempt  him.  To  escape  into  the  world  he 
wrote  his  Congressman,  begging  him  to  obtain 
for  him  an  appointment  to  Annapolis.  The  Con- 
gressman liked  the  letter,  and  wrote  Colonel  Mc- 
Giffin to  ask  if  the  application  of  his  son  had  his 
approval.  Colonel  McGiffin  was  willing,  and  in 
1877  his  son  received  his  commission  as  cadet 
midshipman.  I  knew  McGiffin  only  as  a  boy 
with  whom  in  vacation  time  I  went  coon  hunting 
in  the  woods  outside  of  Washington.  For  his 
age  he  was  a  very  tall  boy,  and  in  his  midship- 
man undress  uniform,  to  my  youthful  eyes,  ap- 
peared a  most  bold  and  adventurous  spirit. 

At  Annapolis  his  record  seems  to  show  he  was 
pretty  much  like  other  boys.  According  to  his 
classmates,  with  all  of  whom  I  find  he  was  very 
popular,  he  stood  high  in  the  practical  studies, 
such  as  seamanship,  gunnery,  navigation,  and 
steam  engineering,  but  in  all  else  he  was  near 
the  foot  of  the  class,  and  in  whatever  escapade 
was  risky  and  reckless  he  was  always  one  of  the 
leaders.  To  him  discipline  was  extremely  irksome. 
He  could  maintain  it  among  others,  but  when  it 
applied  to  himself  it  bored  him.  On  the  floor  of 
the  Academy  building  on  which  was  his  room 
there  was  a  pyramid  of  cannon  balls — relics  of  the 
War  of  1812.  They  stood  at  the  head  of  the 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

stairs,  and  one  warm  night,  when  he  could  not 
sleep,  he  decided  that  no  one  else  should  do  so, 
and,  one  by  one,  rolled  the  cannon  balls  down 
the  stairs.  They  tore  away  the  banisters  and 
bumped  through  the  wooden  steps  and  leaped  off 
into  the  lower  halls.  For  any  one  who  might 
think  of  ascending  to  discover  the  motive  power 
back  of  the  bombardment  they  were  extremely 
dangerous.  But  an  officer  approached  McGiffin 
in  the  rear,  and,  having  been  caught  in  the  act, 
he  was  sent  to  the  prison  ship.  There  he  made 
good  friends  with  his  jailer,  an  old  man-of-wars- 
man  named  "Mike."  He  will  be  remembered 
by  many  naval  officers  who  as  midshipmen  served 
on  the  Santee.  McGiffin  so  won  over  Mike  that 
when  he  left  the  ship  he  carried  with  him  six 
charges  of  gunpowder.  These  he  loaded  into 
the  six  big  guns  captured  in  the  Mexican  War, 
which  lay  on  the  grass  in  the  centre  of  the  Academy 
grounds,  and  at  midnight  on  the  eve  of  July  1st 
he  fired  a  salute.  It  aroused  the  entire  garrison, 
and  for  a  week  the  empty  window  frames  kept 
the  glaziers  busy. 

About  1878  or  1879  there  was  a  famine  in 
Ireland.  The  people  of  New  York  City  con- 
tributed provisions  for  the  sufferers,  and  to  carry 
the  supplies  to  Ireland  the  Government  authorized 

124 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

the  use  of  the  old  Constellation.  At  the  time 
the  voyage  was  to  begin  each  cadet  was  instructed 
to  consider  himself  as  having  been  placed  in  com- 
mand of  the  Constellation  and  to  write  a  report 
on  the  preparations  made  for  the  voyage,  on  the 
loading  of  the  vessel,  and  on  the  distribution  of 
the  stores.  This  exercise  was  intended  for  the 
instruction  of  the  cadets;  first  in  the  matter  of 
seamanship  and  navigation,  and  second  in  mak- 
ing official  reports.  At  that  time  it  was  a  very 
difficult  operation  to  get  a  gun  out  of  the  port 
of  a  vessel  where  the  gun  was  on  a  covered  deck. 
To  do  this  the  necessary  tackles  had  to  be  rigged 
from  the  yard-arm  and  the  yard  and  mast  properly 
braced  and  stayed,  and  then  the  lower  block  of 
the  tackle  carried  in  through  the  gun  port,  which, 
of  course,  gave  the  fall  a  very  bad  reeve.  The 
first  part  of  McGiffin's  report  dealt  with  a  new 
method  of  dismounting  the  guns  and  carrying 
them  through  the  gun  ports,  and  so  admirable  was 
his  plan,  so  simple  and  ingenious,  that  it  was  used 
whenever  it  became  necessary  to  dismount  a  gun 
from  one  of  the  old  sailing  ships.  Having,  how- 
ever, offered  this  piece  of  good  work,  McGiffin's 
report  proceeded  to  tell  of  the  division  of  the  ship 
into  compartments  that  were  filled  with  a  miscel- 
laneous assortment  of  stores,  which  included  the 

125 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

old  "fifteen  puzzles,"  at  that  particular  time  very 
popular.  The  report  terminated  with  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  joy  of  the  famished  Irish  as  they  re- 
ceived the  puzzle-boxes.  At  another  time  the 
cadets  were  required  to  write  a  report  telling  of 
the  suppression  of  the  insurrection  on  the  Isthmus 
of  Panama.  McGiffin  won  great  praise  for  the 
military  arrangements  and  disposition  of  his  men, 
but,  in  the  same  report,  he  went  on  to  describe 
how  he  armed  them  with  a  new  gun  known  as 
Baines's  Rhetoric  and  told  of  the  havoc  he  wrought 
in  the  enemy's  ranks  when  he  fired  these  guns 
loaded  with  similes  and  metaphors  and  hyper- 
boles. 

Of  course,  after  each  exhibition  of  this  sort  he 
was  sent  to  the  Santee  and  given  an  opportun- 
ity to  meditate. 

On  another  occasion,  when  one  of  the  instruc- 
tors lectured  to  the  cadets,  he  required  them  to 
submit  a  written  statement  embodying  all  that 
they  could  recall  of  what  had  been  said  at  the 
lecture.  One  of  the  rules  concerning  this  report 
provided  that  there  should  be  no  erasures  or  inter- 
lineations, but  that  when  mistakes  were  made  the 
objectionable  or  incorrect  expressions  should  be 
included  within  parentheses;  and  that  the  matter 
so  enclosed  within  parentheses  would  not  be  con- 

126 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

sidered  a  part  of  the  report.  McGiffin  wrote  an 
excellent  resume  of  the  lecture,  but  he  interspersed 
through  it  in  parentheses  such  words  as  "ap- 
plause," "cheers,"  "cat-calls,"  and  "groans," 
and  as  these  words  were  enclosed  within  paren- 
theses he  insisted  that  they  did  not  count,  and 
made  a  very  fair  plea  that  he  ought  not  to  be 
punished  for  words  which  slipped  in  by  mistake, 
and  which  he  had  officially  obliterated  by  what  he 
called  oblivion  marks. 

He  was  not  always  on  mischief  bent.  On  one 
occasion,  when  the  house  of  a  professor  caught 
fire,  McGiffin  ran  into  the  flames  and  carried  out 
two  children,  for  which  act  he  was  commended 
by  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 

It  was  an  act  of  Congress  that  determined 
that  the  career  of  McGiffin  should  be  that  of  a 
soldier  of  fortune.  This  was  a  most  unjust  act, 
which  provided  that  only  as  many  midshipmen 
should  receive  commissions  as  on  the  warships 
there  were  actual  vacancies.  In  those  days,  in 
1884,  our  navy  was  very  small.  To-day  there 
is  hardly  a  ship  having  her  full  complement  of 
officers,  and  the  difficulty  is  not  to  get  rid  of 
those  we  have  educated,  but  to  get  officers  to 
educate.  To  the  many  boys  who,  on  the  promise 
that  they  would  be  officers  of  the  navy,  had  worked 

127 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

for  four  years  at  the  Academy  and  served  two 
years  at  sea,  the  act  was  most  unfair.  Out  of  a 
class  of  about  ninety,  only  the  first  twelve  were 
given  commissions  and  the  remaining  eighty 
turned  adrift  upon  the  uncertain  seas  of  civil  life. 
As  a  sop,  each  was  given  one  thousand  dollars. 

McGiffin  was  not  one  of  the  chosen  twelve. 
In  the  final  examinations  on  the  list  he  was  well 
toward  the  tail.  But  without  having  studied 
many  things,  and  without  remembering  the 
greater  part  of  them,  no  one  graduates  from  An- 
napolis, even  last  on  the  list;  and  with  his  one 
thousand  dollars  in  cash,  McGiffin  had  also  this 
six  years  of  education  at  what  was  then  the  best 
naval  college  in  the  world.  This  was  his  only 
asset — his  education — and  as  in  his  own  country 
it  was  impossible  to  dispose  of  it,  for  possible  pur- 
chasers he  looked  abroad. 

At  that  time  the  Tong  King  war  was  on  be- 
tween France  and  China,  and  he  decided,  before 
it  grew  rusty,  to  offer  his  knowledge  to  the  follow- 
ers of  the  Yellow  Dragon.  In  those  days  that 
was  a  hazard  of  new  fortunes  that  meant  much 
more  than  it  does  now.  To-day  the  East  is  as 
near  as  San  Francisco;  the  Japanese-Russian  War, 
our  occupation  of  the  Philippines,  the  part  played 
by  our  troops  in  the  Boxer  trouble,  have  made  the 

128 


McGiffin  as  Superintendent  of  the  Chinese  Naval  College, 
at  the  age  of  thirty-two. 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

affairs  of  China  part  of  the  daily  reading  of  every 
one.  Now,  one  can  step  into  a  brass  bed  at  Forty- 
second  Street  and  in  four  days  at  the  Coast  get 
into  another  brass  bed,  and  in  twelve  more  be 
spinning  down  the  Bund  of  Yokohama  in  a 
rickshaw.  People  go  to  Japan  for  the  winter 
months  as  they  used  to  go  to  Cairo. 

But  in  1885  it  was  no  such  light  undertak- 
ing, certainly  not  for  a  young  man  who  had  been 
brought  up  in  the  quiet  atmosphere  of  an  inland 
town,  where  generations  of  his  family  and  other 
families  had  lived  and  intermarried,  content  with 
their  surroundings. 

With  very  few  of  his  thousand  dollars  left 
him,  McGiffin  arrived  in  February,  1885,  in  San 
Francisco.  From  there  his  letters  to  his  family 
give  one  the  picture  of  a  healthy,  warm-hearted 
youth,  chiefly  anxious  lest  his  mother  and  sister 
should  "worry."  In  our  country  nearly  every 
family  knows  that  domestic  tragedy  when  the 
son  and  heir  "breaks  home  ties/'  and  starts  out 
to  earn  a  living;  and  if  all  the  world  loves  a  lover, 
it  at  least  sympathizes  with  the  boy  who  is  "look- 
ing for  a  job."  The  boy  who  is  looking  for  the 
job  may  not  think  so,  but  each  of  those  who 
has  passed  through  the  same  hard  place  gives  him, 
if  nothing  else,  his  good  wishes.  McGiffin's  letters 

129 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

at  this  period  gain  for  him  from  those  who  have 
had  the  privilege  to  read  them  the  warmest  good 
feeling. 

They  are  filled  with  the  same  cheery  optimism, 
the  same  slurring  over  of  his  troubles,  the  same 
homely  jokes,  the  same  assurances  that  he  is  feel- 
ing "bully,"  and  that  it  all  will  come  out  right, 
that  every  boy,  when  he  starts  out  in  the  world, 
sends  back  to  his  mother. 

"  I  am  in  first-rate  health  and  spirits,  so  I  don't 
want  you  to  fuss  about  me.  I  am  big  enough 
and  ugly  enough  to  scratch  along  somehow,  and 
I  will  not  starve." 

To  his  mother  he  proudly  sends  his  name 
written  in  Chinese  characters,  as  he  had  been 
taught  to  write  it  by  the  Chinese  Consul-General 
in  San  Francisco,  and  a  pen-picture  of  two  ele- 
phants. "I  am  going  to  bring  you  home  two  of 
these,"  he  writes,  not  knowing  that  in  the  strange 
and  wonderful  country  to  which  he  is  going  ele- 
phants are  as  infrequent  as  they  are  in  Pittsburg. 

He  reached  China  in  April,  and  from  Naga- 
saki on  his  way  to  Shanghai  the  steamer  that 
carried  him  was  chased  by  two  French  gun- 
boats. But,  apparently  much  to  his  disappoint- 
ment, she  soon  ran  out  of  range  of  their  guns. 
Though  he  did  not  know  it  then,  with  the  enemy 

130 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

he  had  travelled  so  far  to  fight  this  was  his  first 
and  last  hostile  meeting;  for  already  peace  was 
in  the  air. 

Of  that  and  of  how,  in  spite  of  peace,  he  ob- 
tained the  "job"  he  wanted,  he  must  tell  you 
himself  in  a  letter  home : 


"  TIEN-TSIN,  CHINA,  April  13,  1885. 

"Mv  DEAR  MOTHER — I  have  not  felt  much  in 
the  humor  for  writing,  for  I  did  not  know  what  was 
going  to  happen.  I  spent  a  good  deal  of  money 
coming  out,  and  when  I  got  here,  I  knew,  unless 
something  turned  up,  I  was  a  gone  coon.  We  got 
off  Taku  forts  Sunday  evening  and  the  next  morn- 
ing we  went  inside;  the  channel  is  very  narrow 
and  sown  with  torpedoes.  We  struck  one — an 
electric  one — in  coming  up,  but  it  didn't  go  off. 
We  were  until  10.30  P.M.  in  coming  up  to  Tien- 
Tsin — thirty  miles  in  a  straight  line,  but  nearly 
seventy  by  the  river,  which  is  only  about  one  hun- 
dred feet  wide — and  we  grounded  ten  times. 

"Well — at  last  we  moored  and  went  ashore. 
Brace  Girdle,  an  engineer,  and  I  went  to  the  hotel, 
and  the  first  thing  we  heard  was — that  peace  was 
declared!  I  went  back  on  board  ship,  and  I  didn't 
sleep  much — I  never  was  so  blue  in  my  life.  I 
knew  if  they  didn't  want  me  that  I  might  as  well 
give  up  the  ghost,  for  I  could  never  get  away  from 
China.  Well — I  worried  around  all  night  without 
sleep,  and  in  the  morning  I  felt  as  if  I  had  been 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

drawn  through  a  knot-hole.  I  must  have  lost  ten 
pounds.  I  went  around  about  10  A.M.  and  gave 
my  letters  to  Pethick,  an  American  U.  S.  Vice- 
Consul  and  interpreter  to  Li  Hung  Chang.  He 
said  he  would  fix  them  for  me.  Then  I  went 
back  to  the  ship,  and  as  our  captain  was  going  up 
to  see  Li  Hung  Chang,  I  went  along  out  of  des- 
peration. We  got  in,  and  after  a  while  were  taken 
in  through  corridor  after  corridor  of  the  Viceroy's 
palace  until  we  got  into  the  great  Li,  when  we  sat 
down  and  had  tea  and  tobacco  and  talked  through 
an  interpreter.  When  it  came  my  turn  he  asked: 
'Why  did  you  come  to  China  ?'  I  said:  'To  enter 
the  Chinese  service  for  the  war/  'How  do  you 
expect  to  enter  ? *  'I  expect  you  to  give  me  a  com- 
mission!' 'I  have  no  place  to  offer  you.'  'I  think 
you  have — I  have  come  all  the  way  from  America 
to  get  it/  'What  would  you  like?'  'I  would 
like  to  get  the  new  torpedo-boat  and  go  down  the 
Yang-tse-Kiang  to  the  blockading  squadron/ 
'  Will  you  do  that  ? '  'Of  course/ 

"He  thought  a  little  and  said:  'I  will  see  what 
can  be  done.  Will  you  take  $100  a  month  for  a 
start?'  I  said:  'That  depends/  (Of  course  I 
would  take  it.)  Well,  after  parley,  he  said  he 
would  put  me  on  the  flagship,  and  if  I  did  well  he 
would  promote  me.  Then  he  looked  at  me  and 
said:  'How  old  are  you?'  When  I  told  him  I 
was  twenty-four  I  thought  he  would  faint — for  in 
China  a  man  is  a  boy  until  he  is  over  thirty.  He 
said  I  would  never  do — I  was  a  child.  I  could  not 
know  anything  at  all.  I  could  not  convince  him, 

132 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

but  at  last  he  compromised — I  was  to  pass  an 
examination  at  the  Arsenal  at  the  Naval  College, 
in  all  branches,  and  if  they  passed  me  I  would  have 
a  show.  So  we  parted.  I  reported  for  examina- 
tion next  day,  but  was  put  off — same  the  next  day. 
But  to-day  I  was  told  to  come,  and  sat  down  to  a 
stock  of  foolscap,  and  had  a  pretty  stiff  exam. 
I  am  only  just  through.  I  had  seamanship,  gun- 
nery, navigation,  nautical  astronomy,  algebra, 
geometry,  trigonometry,  conic  sections,  curve 
tracing,  differential  and  integral  calculus.  I  had 
only  three  questions  out  of  five  to  answer  in  each 
branch,  but  in  the  first  three  I  answered  all  five. 
After  that  I  only  had  time  for  three,  but  at  the  end 
he  said  I  need  not  finish,  he  was  perfectly  satisfied. 
I  had  done  remarkably  well,  and  he  would  report 
to  the  Viceroy  to-morrow.  He  examined  my  first 
papers — seamanship — said  I  was  perfect  in  it,  so 
I  will  get  along,  you  need  not  fear.  I  told  the 
Consul — he  was  very  well  pleased — he  is  a  nice 
man. 

"I  feel  pretty  well  now — have  had  dinner  and 
am  smoking  a  good  Manila  cheroot.  I  wrote  hard 
all  day,  wrote  fifteen  sheets  of  foolscap  and  made 
about  a  dozen  drawings — got  pretty  tired. 

"  I  have  had  a  hard  scramble  for  the  service  and 
only  got  in  by  the  skin  of  my  teeth.  I  guess  I  will 
go  to  bed — I  will  sleep  well  to-night — Thursday. 

"I  did  not  hear  from  the  Naval  Secretary, 
Tuesday,  so  yesterday  morning  I  went  up  to  the 
Admiralty  and  sent  in  my  card.  He  came  out 
and  received  me  very  well — said  I  had  passed  a 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

'very  splendid  examination';  had  been  recom- 
mended very  strongly  to  the  Viceroy,  who  was 
very  much  pleased;  that  the  Director  of  the  Naval 
College  over  at  the  Arsenal  had  wanted  me  and 
would  I  go  over  at  once  ?  I  would.  It  was  about 
five  miles.  We  (a  friend,  who  is  a  great  rider 
here)  went  on  steeplechase  ponies — we  were  fer- 
ried across  the  Pei  Ho  in  a  small  scow  and  then 
had  a  long  ride.  There  is  a  path — but  Pritchard 
insisted  on  taking  all  the  ditches,  and  as  my  pony 
jumped  like  a  cat,  it  wasn't  nice  at  first,  but  I  didn't 
squeal  and  kept  my  seat  and  got  the  swing  of  it  at 
last  and  rather  liked  it.  I  think  I  will  keep  a  horse 
here — you  can  hire  one  and  a  servant  together  for 
$7  a  month;  that  is  $5.60  of  our  money,  and 
pony  and  man  found  in  everything. 

"Well — at  last  we  got  to  the  Arsenal — a  place 
about  four  miles  around,  fortified,  where  all  sorts 
of  arms — cartridges,  shot  and  shell,  engines,  and 
everything — are  made.  The  Naval  College  is  in- 
side surrounded  by  a  moat  and  wall.  I  thought 
to  myself,  if  the  cadet  here  is  like  to  the  thing  I 
used  to  be  at  the  U.  S.  N.  A.  that  won't  keep  him 
in.  I  went  through  a  lot  of  yards  till  I  was  ush- 
ered into  a  room  finished  in  black  ebony  and  was 
greeted  very  warmly  by  the  Director.  We  took 
seats  on  a  raised  platform — Chinese  style — and 
pretty  soon  an  interpreter  came,  one  of  the  Chinese 
professors,  who  was  educated  abroad,  and  we 
talked  and  drank  tea.  He  said  I  had  done  well, 
that  he  had  the  authority  of  the  Viceroy  to  take 
me  there  as  'Professor'  of  seamanship  and  gun- 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

nery;  in  addition  I  might  be  required  to  teach 
navigation  or  nautical  astronomy,  or  drill  the  cadets 
in  infantry,  artillery,  and  fencing.  For  this  I  was 
to  receive  what  would  be  in  our  money  $1,800 
per  annum,  as  near  as  we  can  compare  it,  paid  in 
gold  each  month.  Besides,  I  will  have  a  house 
furnished  for  my  use,  and  it  is  their  intention,  as 
soon  as  I  show  that  I  know  something,  to  consid- 
erably increase  my  pay.  They  asked  the  Viceroy 
to  give  me  130  T  per  month  (about  $186)  and 
house,  but  the  Viceroy  said  I  was  but  a  boy;  that 
I  had  seen  no  years  and  had  only  come  here  a 
week  ago  with  no  one  to  vouch  for  me,  and  that  I 
might  turn  out  an  impostor.  But  he  would  risk 
100  T  on  me  anyhow,  and  as  soon  as  I  was  re- 
ported favorably  on  by  the  college  I  would  be 
raised — the  agreement  is  to  be  for  three  years. 
For  a  few  months  I  am  to  command  a  training 
ship — an  ironclad  that  is  in  dry  dock  at  present, 
until  a  captain  in  the  English  Navy  comes  out, 
who  has  been  sent  for  to  command  her. 

"So  Here  I  Am — twenty-four  years  old  and 
captain  of  a  man-of-war — a  better  one  than  any 
in  our  own  navy — only  for  a  short  time,  of  course, 
but  I  would  be  a  pretty  long  time  before  I  would 
command  one  at  home.  Well — I  accepted  and 
will  enter  on  my  duties  in  a  week,  as  soon  as  my 
house  is  put  in  order.  I  saw  it — it  has  a  long  ve- 
randa, very  broad;  with  flower  garden,  apricot 
trees,  etc.,  just  covered  with  blossoms;  a  wide  hall 
on  the  front,  a  room  about  18x15,  with  a  I3~foot 
ceiling;  then  back  another  rather  larger,  with  a 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

cupola  skylight  in  the  centre,  where  I  am  going  to 
put  a  shelf  with  flowers.  The  Government  is  to 
furnish  the  house  with  bed,  tables,  chairs,  side- 
boards, lounges,  stove  for  kitchen.  I  have  grates 
(American)  in  the  room,  but  I  don't  need  them. 
We  have  snow,  and  a  good  deal  of  ice  in  winter, 
but  the  thermometer  never  gets  below  zero.  I 
have  to  supply  my  own  crockery.  I  will  have  two 
servants  and  cook;  I  will  only  get  one  and  the 
cook  first — they  only  cost  $4  to  $5.50  per  month, 
and  their  board  amounts  to  very  little.  I  can  get 
along,  don't  you  think  so  ?  Now  I  want  you  to 
get  Jim  to  pack  up  all  my  professional  works 
on  gunnery,  surveying,  seamanship,  mathematics, 
astronomy,  algebra,  geometry,  trigonometry,  conic 
sections,  calculus,  mechanics,  and  every  book  of 
that  description  I  own,  including  those  paper- 
bound  'Naval  Institute'  papers,  and  put  them  in  a 
box,  together  with  any  photos,  etc.,  you  think  I 
would  like — I  have  none  of  you  or  Pa  or  the  fam- 
ily (including  Carrie) — and  send  to  me. 

"  I  just  got  in  in  time — didn't  I  ?  Another  week 
would  have  been  too  late.  My  funds  were  get- 
ting low;  I  would  not  have  had  anything  before 
long.  The  U.  S.  Consul,  General  Bromley,  is  much 
pleased.  The  interpreter  says  it  was  all  in  the 
way  I  did  with  the  Viceroy  in  the  interview. 

"  I  will  have  a  chance  to  go  to  Peking  and  later 
to  a  tiger  hunt  in  Mongolia,  but  for  the  present  I 
am  going  to  study,  work,  and  stroke  these  manda- 
rins till  I  get  a  raise.  I  am  the  only  instructor  in 
both  seamanship  and  gunnery,  and  I  must  know 

136 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

everything,  both  practically  and  theoretically.  But 
it  will  be  good  for  me — and  the  only  thing  is, 
that  if  I  were  put  back  into  the  Navy  I  would  be 
in  a  dilemma.  I  think  I  will  get  my  'influence' 
to  work,  and  I  want  you  people  at  home  to  look 
out,  and  in  case  I  am — if  it  were  represented  to  the 
Sec.  that  my  position  here  was  giving  me  an  im- 
mense lot  of  practical  knowledge  professionally — 
more  than  I  could  get  on  a  ship  at  sea — I  think 
he  would  give  me  two  years'  leave  on  half  or 
quarter  pay.  Or,  I  would  be  willing  to  do  with- 
out pay — only  to  be  kept  on  the  register  in  my 
rank. 

"I  will  write  more  about  this.      Love  to  all." 

It  is  characteristic  of  McGiffin  that  in  the 
very  same  letter  in  which  he  announces  he  has 
entered  foreign  service  he  plans  to  return  to  that 
of  his  own  country.  This  hope  never  left  him. 
You  find  the  same  homesickness  for  the  quarter- 
deck of  an  American  man-of-war  all  through  his 
later  letters.  At  one  time  a  bill  to  reinstate  the 
midshipmen  who  had  been  cheated  of  their  com- 
missions was  introduced  into  Congress.  Of  this 
McG;ffin  writes  frequently  as  "our  bill."  "It 
may  pass,"  he  writes,  "but  I  am  tired  hoping. 
I  have  hoped  so  long.  And  if  it  should,"  he  adds 
anxiously,  "there  may  be  a  time  limit  set  in  which 
a  man  must  rejoin,  or  lose  his  chance,  so  do 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

not  fail  to  let  me  know  as  quickly  as  you  can." 
But  the  bill  did  not  pass,  and  McGiffin  never 
returned  to  the  navy  that  had  cut  him  adrift. 
He  settled  down  at  Tien-Tsin  and  taught  the 
young  cadets  how  to  shoot.  Almost  all  of  those 
who  in  the  Chinese-Japanese  War  served  as  offi- 
cers were  his  pupils.  As  the  navy  grew,  he  grew 
with  it,  and  his  position  increased  in  importance. 
More  Mexican  dollars  per  month,  more  servants, 
larger  houses,  and  buttons  of  various  honorable 
colors  were  given  him,  and,  in  return,  he  estab- 
lished for  China  a  modern  naval  college  patterned 
after  our  own.  In  those  days  throughout  China 
and  Japan  you  could  find  many  of  these  foreign 
advisers.  Now,  in  Japan,  the  Hon.  W.  H.  Den- 
nison  of  the  Foreign  Office,  one  of  our  own  peo- 
ple, is  the  only  foreigner  with  whom  the  Japanese 
have  not  parted,  and  in  China  there  are  none. 
Of  all  of  those  who  have  gone  none  served  his  em- 
ployers more  faithfully  than  did  McGiffin.  At  a 
time  when  every  official  robbed  the  people  and  the 
Government,  and  when  "squeeze"  or  "graft"  was 
recognized  as  a  perquisite,  McGiffin's  hands  were 
clean.  The  shells  purchased  for  the  Govern- 
ment by  him  were  not  loaded  with  black  sand, 
nor  were  the  rifles  fitted  with  barrels  of  iron  pipe. 
Once  a  year  he  celebrated  the  Thanksgiving  Day 

138 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

of  his  own  country  by  inviting  to  a  great  dinner 
all  the  Chinese  naval  officers  who  had  been  at 
least  in  part  educated  in  America.  It  was  a  great 
occasion,  and  to  enjoy  it  officers  used  to  come  from 
as  far  as  Port  Arthur,  Shanghai,  and  Hong-Kong. 
So  fully  did  some  of  them  appreciate  the  efforts 
of  their  host  that  previous  to  his  annual  dinner,  for 
twenty-four  hours,  they  delicately  starved  them- 
selves. 

During  ten  years  McGiffin  served  as  naval 
constructor  and  professor  of  gunnery  and  sea- 
manship, and  on  board  ships  at  sea  gave  practi- 
cal demonstrations  in  the  handling  of  the  new 
cruisers.  In  1894  he  applied  for  leave,  which  was 
granted,  but  before  he  had  sailed  for  home  war 
with  Japan  was  declared  and  he  withdrew  his 
application.  He  was  placed  as  second  in  com- 
mand on  board  the  Chen  Yuen,  a  seven-thousand- 
ton  battleship,  a  sister  ship  to  the  Ting  Yuen, 
the  flagship  of  Admiral  Ting  Ju  Chang.  On  the 
memorable  iyth  of  September,  1894,  the  battle  of 
the  Yalu  was  fought,  and  so  badly  were  the  Chi- 
nese vessels  hammered  that  the  Chinese  navy, 
for  the  time  being,  was  wiped  out  of  existence. 

From  the  start  the  advantage  was  with  the  Jap- 
anese fleet.  In  heavy  guns  the  Chinese  were  the 
better  armed,  but  in  quick-firing  guns  the  Japan- 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

ese  were  vastly  superior,  and  while  the  Chinese 
battleships  Ting  Yuen  and  Chen  Yuen,  each  of 
7,430  tons,  were  superior  to  any  of  the  Japanese 
warships,  the  three  largest  of  which  were  each 
of  4,277  tons,  the  gross  tonnage  of  the  Japanese 
fleet  was  36,000  to  21,000  of  the  Chinese.  During 
the  progress  of  the  battle  the  ships  engaged  on 
each  side  numbered  an  even  dozen,  but  at  the 
very  start,  before  a  decisive  shot  was  fired  by 
either  contestant,  the  Tsi  Yuen,  2,355  tons>  an^ 
Kwan  Chiae,  1,300  tons,  ran  away,  and  before 
they  had  time  to  get  into  the  game  the  Chao  Yung 
and  Yang  Wei  were  in  flames  and  had  fled  to  the 
nearest  land.  So  the  battle  was  fought  by  eight 
Chinese  ships  against  twelve  of  the  Japanese. 
Of  the  Chinese  vessels,  the  flagship,  commanded 
by  Admiral  Ting,  and  her  sister  ship,  which  im- 
mediately after  the  beginning  of  the  fight  was  for 
four  hours  commanded  by  McGiffin,  were  the  two 
chief  aggressors,  and  in  consequence  received  the 
fire  of  the  entire  Japanese  squadron.  Toward 
the  end  of  the  fight,  which  without  interruption 
lasted  for  five  long  hours,  the  Japanese  did  not 
even  consider  the  four  smaller  ships  of  the  enemy, 
but,  sailing  around  the  two  ironclads  in  a  circle, 
fired  only  at  them.  The  Japanese  themselves 
testified  that  these  two  ships  never  lost  their 

140 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

formation,  and  that  when  her  sister  ironclad  was 
closely  pressed  the  Chen  Yuen,  by  her  movements 
and  gun  practice,  protected  the  Ting  Yuen,  and, 
in  fact,  while  she  could  not  prevent  the  heavy 
loss  the  fleet  encountered,  preserved  it  from  an- 
nihilation. During  the  fight  this  ship  was  almost 
continuously  on  fire,  and  was  struck  by  every 
kind  of  projectile,  from  the  thirteen-inch  Canet 
shells  to  a  rifle  bullet,  four  hundred  times.  Mc- 
GifHn  himself  was  so  badly  wounded,  so  beaten 
about  by  concussions,  so  burned,  and  so  bruised 
by  steel  splinters,  that  his  health  and  eyesight 
were  forever  wrecked.  But  he  brought  the  Chen 
Yuen  safely  into  Port  Arthur  and  the  remnants 
of  the  fleet  with  her. 

On  account  of  his  lack  of  health  he  resigned 
from  the  Chinese  service  and  returned  to  America. 
For  two  years  he  lived  in  New  York  City,  suffer- 
ing in  body  without  cessation  the  most  exquisite 
torture.  During  that  time  his  letters  to  his  family 
show  only  tremendous  courage.  On  the  splin- 
tered, gaping  deck  of  the  Chen  Yuen,  with  the 
fires  below  it,  and  the  shells  bursting  upon  it,  he 
had  shown  to  his  Chinese  crew  the  courage  of  the 
white  man  who  knew  he  was  responsible  for 
them  and  for  the  honor  of  their  country.  But 
far  greater  and  more  difficult  was  the  courage  he 

141 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

showed  while  alone  in  the  dark  sick-room,  and  in 
the  private  wards  of  the  hospitals. 

In  the  letters  he  dictates  from  there  he  still  is 
concerned  only  lest  those  at  home  shall  "worry"; 
he  reassures  them  with  falsehoods,  jokes  at  their 
fears;  of  the  people  he  can  see  from  the  window 
of  the  hospital  tells  them  foolish  stories;  for  a 
little  boy  who  has  been  kind  he  asks  them  to  send 
him  his  Chinese  postage  stamps;  he  plans  a  trip 
he  will  take  with  them  when  he  is  stronger,  know- 
ing he  never  will  be  stronger.  The  doctors  had 
urged  upon  him  a  certain  operation,  and  of  it 
to  a  friend  he  wrote:  "I  know  that  I  will  have 
to  have  a  piece  about  three  inches  square  cut 
out  of  my  skull,  and  this  nerve  cut  off  near  the 
middle  of  the  brain,  as  well  as  my  eye  taken  out 
(for  a  couple  of  hours  only,  provided  it  is  not  mis- 
laid, and  can  be  found).  Doctor  -  -  and  his 
crowd  show  a  bad  memory  for  failures.  As  a 
result  of  this  operation  others  have  told  me — I 
forget  the  percentage  of  deaths,  which  does  not 
matter,  but — that  a  large  percentage  have  become 
insane.  And  some  lost  their  sight." 

While  threatened  with  insanity  and  complete 
blindness,  and  hourly  from  his  wounds  suffering 
a  pain  drugs  could  not  master,  he  dictated  for  the 
Century  Magazine  the  only  complete  account  of 

142 


Commander  McGiffin  in  Hospital  After  the  Battle 
of  the  Yalu. 

Showing  damage  to  clothes  due  to  concussion. 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGiffin 

the  battle  of  the  Yalu.  In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Rich- 
ard Watson  Gilder  he  writes:  "...  my  eyes  are 
troubling  me.  1  cannot  see  even  what  I  am  writ- 
ing now,  and  am  getting  the  article  under  difficul- 
ties. I  yet  hope  to  place  it  in  your  hands  by  the 
2  ist,  still,  if  my  eyes  grow  worse " 

"  Still,  if  my  eyes  grow  worse 

The  unfinished  sentence  was  grimly  prophetic. 

Unknown  to  his  attendants  at  the  hospital, 
among  the  papers  in  his  despatch-box  he  had 
secreted  his  service  revolver.  On  the  morning  of 
the  nth  of  February,  1897,  he  asked  for  this 
box,  and  on  some  pretext  sent  the  nurse  from  the 
room.  When  the  report  of  the  pistol  brought 
them  running  to  his  bedside,  they  found  the  pain- 
driven  body  at  peace,  and  the  tired  eyes  dark 
forever. 

In  the  article  in  the  Century  on  the  battle  of 
the  Yalu,  he  had  said: 

"Chief  among  those  who  have  died  for  their 
country  is  Admiral  Ting  Ju  Chang,  a  gallant  sol- 
dier and  true  gentleman.  Betrayed  by  his  country- 
men, fighting  against  odds,  almost  his  last  official 
act  was  to  stipulate  for  the  lives  of  his  officers 
and  men.  His  own  he  scorned  to  save,  well 
knowing  that  his  ungrateful  country  would  prove 
less  merciful  than  his  honorable  foe.  Bitter,  in- 


Captain  Philo  Norton  McGifhn 

deed,  must  have  been  the  reflections  of  the  old, 
wounded  hero,  in  that  midnight  hour,  as  he 
drank  the  poisoned  cup  that  was  to  give  him  rest." 
And  bitter  indeed  must  have  been  the  reflections 
of  the  young  wounded  American,  robbed,  by  the 
parsimony  of  his  country,  of  the  right  he  had 
earned  to  serve  it,  and  who  was  driven  out  to  give 
his  best  years  and  his  life  for  a  strange  people  un- 
der a  strange  flag. 


'44 


WILLIAM  WALKER,  THE  KING 
OF  THE  FILIBUSTERS 


WILLIAM  WALKER,   THE   KING   OF  THE 
FILIBUSTERS 

IT  is  safe  to  say  that  to  members  of  the  younger 
generation  the  name  of  William  Walker  con- 
veys absolutely  nothing.  To  them,  as  a  name, 
"William  Walker"  awakens  no  pride  of  race  or 
country.  It  certainly  does  not  suggest  poetry  and 
adventure.  To  obtain  a  place  in  even  this  group 
of  Soldiers  of  Fortune,  William  Walker,  the  most 
distinguished  of  all  American  Soldiers  of  For- 
tune, the  one  who  but  for  his  own  countrymen 
would  have  single-handed  attained  the  most  far- 
reaching  results,  had  to  wait  his  turn  behind  ad- 
venturers of  other  lands  and  boy  officers  of  his  own. 
And  yet  had  this  man  with  the  plain  name,  the 
name  that  to-day  means  nothing,  accomplished 
what  he  adventured,  he  would  on  this  continent 
have  solved  the  problem  of  slavery,  have  estab- 
lished an  empire  in  Mexico  and  in  Central  Amer- 
ica, and,  incidentally,  have  brought  us  into  war 
with  all  of  Europe.  That  is  all  he  would  have 
accomplished. 


William  Walker 

In  the  days  of  gold  in  San  Francisco  among 
the  "Forty-niners"  William  Walker  was  one  of 
the  most  famous,  most  picturesque  and  popular 
figures.  Jack  Oakhurst,  gambler;  Colonel  Star- 
bottle,  duellist;  Yuba  Bill,  stage-coach  driver,  were 
his  contemporaries.  Bret  Harte  was  one  of  his 
keenest  admirers,  and  in  two  of  his  stories,  thinly 
disguised  under  a  more  appealing  name,  Walker 
is  the  hero.  When,  later,  Walker  came  to  New 
York  City,  in  his  honor  Broadway  from  the 
Battery  to  Madison  Square  was  bedecked  with 
flags  and  arches.  "It  was  roses,  roses  all  the 
way."  The  house-tops  rocked  and  swayed. 

In  New  Orleans,  where  in  a  box  at  the  opera 
he  made  his  first  appearance,  for  ten  minutes  the 
performance  came  to  a  pause,  while  the  audience 
stood  to  salute  him. 

This  happened  less  than  fifty  years  ago,  and 
there  are  men  who  as  boys  were  out  with  "  Walker 
of  Nicaragua,"  and  who  are  still  active  in  the 
public  life  of  San  Francisco  and  New  York. 

Walker  was  born  in  1824,  in  Nashville,  Tenn. 
He  was  the  oldest  son  of  a  Scotch  banker,  a  man 
of  a  deeply  religious  mind,  and  interested  in  a 
business  which  certainly  is  removed,  as  far  as 
possible,  from  the  profession  of  arms.  Indeed, 
few  men  better  than  William  Walker  illustrate 

148 


William  Walker 

the  fact  that  great  generals  are  born,  not  trained. 
Everything  in  Walker's  birth,  family  tradition, 
and  education  pointed  to  his  becoming  a  member 
of  one  of  the  "learned"  professions.  It  was  the 
wish  of  his  father  that  he  should  be  a  minister  of 
the  Presbyterian  Church,  and  as  a  child  he  was 
trained  with  that  end  in  view.  He  himself  pre- 
ferred to  study  medicine,  and  after  graduating  at 
the  University  of  Tennessee,  at  Edinburgh  he 
followed  a  course  of  lectures,  and  for  two  years 
travelled  in  Europe,  visiting  many  of  the  great 
hospitals. 

Then  having  thoroughly  equipped  himself  to 
practise  as  a  physician,  after  a  brief  return  to  his 
native  city,  and  as  short  a  stay  in  Philadelphia,  he 
took  down  his  shingle  forever,  and  proceeded  to 
New  Orleans  to  study  law.  In  two  years  he  was 
admitted  to  the  bar  of  Louisiana.  But  because 
clients  were  few,  or  because  the  red  tape  of  the 
law  chafed  his  spirit,  within  a  year,  as  already  he 
had  abandoned  the  Church  and  Medicine,  he 
abandoned  his  law  practice  and  became  an  edi- 
torial writer  on  the  New  Orleans  Crescent.  A 
year  later  the  restlessness  which  had  rebelled 
against  the  grave  professions  led  him  to  the  gold 
fields  of  California,  and  San  Francisco.  There,  in 
1852,  at  the  age  of  only  twenty-eight,  as  editor 

149 


William  Walker 

of  the  San  Francisco  Herald,  Walker  began  his 
real  life  which  so  soon  was  to  end  in  both  disaster 
and  glory. 

Up  to  his  twenty-eighth  year,  except  in  his  rest- 
lessness, nothing  in  his  life  foreshadowed  what  was 
to  follow.  Nothing  pointed  to  him  as  a  man  for 
whom  thousands  of  other  men,  from  every  capital 
of  the  world,  would  give  up  their  lives. 

Negatively,  by  abandoning  three  separate  call- 
ings, and  in  making  it  plain  that  a  professional 
career  did  not  appeal  to  him,  Walker  had  thrown 
a  certain  sidelight  on  his  character;  but  actively  he 
never  had  given  any  hint  that  under  the  thoughtful 
brow  of  the  young  doctor  and  lawyer  there  was 
a  mind  evolving  schemes  of  empire,  and  an  am- 
bition limited  only  by  the  two  great  oceans. 

Walker's  first  adventure  was  undoubtedly  in- 
spired by  and  in  imitation  of  one  which  at  the  time 
of  his  arrival  in  San  Francisco  had  just  been 
brought  to  a  disastrous  end.  This  was  the  De 
Boulbon  expedition  into  Mexico.  The  Count 
Gaston  Raoulx  de  Raousset-Boulbon  was  a  young 
French  nobleman  and  Soldier  of  Fortune,  a  chas- 
seur d'Afrique,  a  duellist,  journalist,  dreamer,  who 
came  to  California  to  dig  gold.  Baron  Har- 
den-Hickey,  who  was  born  in  San  Francisco  a 
few  years  after  Boulbon  at  the  age  of  thirty  was 


William  Walker 

shot  in  Mexico,  also  was  inspired  to  dreams  of 
conquest  by  this  same  gentleman  adventurer. 

Boulbon  was  a  young  man  of  large  ideas.  In 
the  rapid  growth  of  California  he  saw  a  threat  to 
Mexico  and  proposed  to  that  government,  as  a 
"buffer"  state  between  the  two  republics,  to  form 
a  French  colony  in  the  Mexican  State  of  Sonora. 
Sonora  is  that  part  of  Mexico  which  directly  joins 
on  the  south  with  our  State  of  Arizona.  The  Pres- 
ident of  Mexico  gave  Boulbon  permission  to  at- 
tempt this,  and  in  1852  he  landed  at  Guaymas  in 
the  Gulf  of  California  with  two  hundred  and  sixty 
well-armed  Frenchmen.  The  ostensible  excuse  of 
Boulbon  for  thus  invading  foreign  soil  was  his  con- 
tract with  the  President  under  which  his  "emi- 
grants" were  hired  to  protect  other  foreigners 
working  in  the  "Restauradora"  mines  from  the 
attacks  of  Apache  Indians  from  our  own  Arizona. 
But  there  is  evidence  that  back  of  Boulbon  was 
the  French  Government,  and  that  he  was  attempt- 
ing, in  his  small  way,  what  later  was  attempted 
by  Maximilian,  backed  by  a  French  army  corps 
and  Louis  Napoleon,  to  establish  in  Mexico  an 
empire  under  French  protection.  For  both  the 
filibuster  and  the  emperor  the  end  was  the  same; 
to  be  shot  by  the  fusillade  against  a  church 
wall. 


William  Walker 

In  1852,  two  years  before  Boulbon's  death, 
which  was  the  finale  to  his  second  filibustering 
expedition  into  Sonora,  he  wrote  to  a  friend  in 
Paris:  "Europeans  are  disturbed  by  the  growth 
of  the  United  States.  And  rightly  so.  Unless 
she  be  dismembered;  unless  a  powerful  rival  be 
built  up  beside  her  (/'.  e.,  France  in  Mexico),  Amer- 
ica will  become,  through  her  commerce  her  trade, 
her  population,  her  geographical  position  upon 
two  oceans,  the  inevitable  mistress  Df  ihe  world. 
In  ten  years  Europe  dare  not  fire  a  shot  without 
her  permission.  As  I  write  fifty  Americans  ore- 
pare  to  sail  for  Mexico  and  go  perhaps  to  victory. 
Voila  les  Etats-Unis." 

These  fifty  Americans  who,  in  the  eyes  of 
Boulbon,  threatened  the  peace  of  Europe,  were 
led  by  the  ex-doctor,  ex-lawyer,  ex-editor,  William 
Walker,  aged  twenty-eight  years.  Walker  had  at- 
tempted but  had  failed  to  obtain  from  the  Mexi- 
can Government  such  a  contract  as  the  one  it  had 
granted  De  Boulbon.  He  accordingly  sailed  with- 
out it,  announcing  that,  whether  the  Mexican 
Government  asked  him  to  do  so  or  not,  he  would 
see  that  the  women  and  children  on  the  border 
of  Mexico  and  Arizona  were  protected  from 
massacre  by  the  Indians.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  when  Dr.  Jameson  raided  the  Transvaal  he 

152 


William  Walker 

also  went  to  protect  "women  and  children"  from 
massacre  by  the  Boers.  Walker's  explanation  of 
his  expedition,  in  his  own  words,  is  as  follows. 
He  writes  in  the  third  person:  "What  Walker 
saw  and  heard  satisfied  him  that  a  comparatively 
small  body  of  Americans  might  gain  a  position  on 
the  Sonora  frontier  and  protect  the  families  on 
the  border  from  the  Indians,  and  such  an  act 
would  be  one  of  humanity  whether  or  not  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Mexican  Government.  The  condi- 
tion of  the  upper  part  of  Sonora  was  at  that  time, 
and  still  is  [he  was  writing  eight  years  later,  in 
1860],  a  disgrace  to  the  civilization  of  the  conti- 
nent .  .  .  and  the  people  of  the  United  States 
were  more  immediately  responsible  before  the 
world  for  the  Apache  outrages.  Northern  Sonora 
was  in  fact,  more  under  the  dominion  of  the 
Apaches  than  under  the  laws  of  Mexico,  and  the 
contributions  of  the  Indians  were  collected  with 
greater  regularity  and  certainty  than  the  dues  of 
the  tax-gatherers.  The  state  of  this  region  fur- 
nished the  best  defence  for  any  American  aiming  to 
settle  there  without  the  formal  consent  of  Mexico; 
and,  although  political  changes  would  certainly 
have  followed  the  establishment  of  a  colony,  they 
might  be  justified  by  the  plea  that  any  social  or- 
ganization, no  matter  how  secured,  is  preferable 


William  Walker 

to  that  in  which  individuals  and  families  are  alto- 
gether at  the  mercy  of  savages." 

While  at  the  time  of  Jameson's  raid  the  women 
and  children  in  danger  of  massacre  from  the  Boers 
were  as  many  as  there  are  snakes  in  Ireland,  at 
the  time  of  Walker's  raid  the  women  and  children 
were  in  danger  from  the  Indians,  who  as  enemies, 
as  Walker  soon  discovered,  were  as  cruel  and  as 
greatly  to  be  feared  as  he  had  described  them. 

But  it  was  not  to  save  women  and  children  that 
Walker  sought  to  conquer  the  State  of  Sonora. 
At  the  time  of  his  expedition  the  great  question 
of  slavery  was  acute;  and  if  in  the  States  next  to 
be  admitted  to  the  Union  slavery  was  to  be  pro- 
hibited, the  time  had  come,  so  it  seemed  to  this 
statesman  of  twenty-eight  years,  when  the  South 
must  extend  her  boundaries,  and  for  her  slaves 
find  an  outlet  in  fresh  territory.  Sonora  already 
joined  Arizona.  By  conquest  her  territory  could 
easily  be  extended  to  meet  Texas.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  strategically  the  spot  selected  by  William 
Walker  for  the  purpose  for  which  he  desired  it 
was  almost  perfect.  Throughout  his  brief  career 
one  must  remember  that  the  spring  of  all  his  acts 
was  this  dream  of  an  empire  where  slavery  would 
be  recognized.  His  mother  was  a  slare-holder. 
In  Tennessee  he  had  been  born  and  bred  sur- 


William  Walker 

rounded  by  slaves.  His  youth  and  manhood  had 
been  spent  in  Nashville  and  New  Orleans.  He 
believed  as  honestly,  as  fanatically  in  the  right 
to  hold  slaves  as  did  his  father  in  the  faith  of  the 
Covenanters.  To-day  one  reads  his  arguments 
in  favor  of  slavery  with  the  most  curious  inter- 
est. His  appeal  to  the  humanity  of  his  reader, 
to  his  heart,  to  his  sense  of  justice,  to  his  fear  of 
God,  and  to  his  belief  in  the  Holy  Bible  not  to 
abolish  slavery,  but  to  continue  it,  to  this  genera- 
tion is  as  amusing  as  the  topsy-turvyisms  of  Gil- 
bert or  Shaw.  But  to  the  young  man  himself 
slavery  was  a  sacred  institution,  intended  for  the 
betterment  of  mankind,  a  God-given  benefit  to 
the  black  man  and  a  God-given  right  of  his  white 
master. 

White  brothers  in  the  South,  with  perhaps 
less  exalted  motives,  contributed  funds  to  fit  out 
Walker's  expedition,  and  in  October,  1852,  with 
forty-five  men,  he  landed  at  Cape  St.  Lucas,  at 
the  extreme  point  of  Lower  California.  Lower 
California,  it  must  be  remembered,  in  spite  of 
its  name,  is  not  a  part  of  our  California,  but  then 
was,  and  still  is,  a  part  of  Mexico.  The  fact  that 
he  was  at  last  upon  the  soil  of  the  enemy  caused 
Walker  to  throw  off  all  pretence;  and  instead  of 
hastening  to  protect  women  and  children,  he 

155 


William  Walker 

sailed  a  few  miles  farther  up  the  coast  to  La  Paz. 
With  his  forty-five  followers  he  raided  the  town, 
made  the  Governor  a  prisoner,  and  established 
a  republic  with  himself  as  President.  In  a  proc- 
lamation he  declared  the  people  free  of  the  tyr- 
anny of  Mexico.  They  had  no  desire  to  be  free, 
but  Walker  was  determined,  and,  whether  they 
liked  it  or  not,  they  woke  up  to  find  themselves 
an  independent  republic.  A  few  weeks  later, 
although  he  had  not  yet  set  foot  there,  Walker 
annexed  on  paper  the  State  of  Sonora,  and  to  both 
States  gave  the  name  of  the  Republic  of  Sonora. 

As  soon  as  word  of  this  reached  San  Fran- 
cisco, his  friends  busied  themselves  in  his  behalf, 
and  the  danger-loving  and  adventurous  of  all  lands 
were  enlisted  as  "emigrants"  and  shipped  to  him 
in  the  bark  Anita. 

Two  months  later,  in  November,  1852,  three 
hundred  of  these  joined  Walker.  They  were  as 
desperate  a  band  of  scoundrels  as  ever  robbed  a 
sluice,  stoned  a  Chinaman,  or  shot  a  "Greaser." 
When  they  found  that  to  command  them  there 
was  only  a  boy,  they  plotted  to  blow  up  the  maga- 
zine in  which  the  powder  was  stored,  rob  the 
camp,  and  march  north,  supporting  themselves 
by  looting  the  ranches.  Walker  learned  of  their 
plot,  tried  the  ringleaders  by  court-martial,  and 

156 


William  Walker 

shot  them.  With  a  force  as  absolutely  undisci- 
plined as  was  his,  the  act  required  the  most  com- 
plete personal  courage.  That  was  a  quality  the 
men  with  him  could  fully  appreciate.  They  saw 
they  had  as  a  leader  one  who  could  fight,  and  one 
who  would  punish.  The  majority  did  not  want  a 
leader  who  would  punish;  so  when  Walker  called 
upon  those  who  would  follow  him  to  Sonora  to 
show  their  hands,  only  the  original  forty-five  and 
about  forty  of  the  later  recruits  remained  with 
him.  With  less  than  one  hundred  men  he  started 
to  march  up  the  Peninsula  through  Lower  Cali- 
fornia, and  so  around  the  Gulf  to  Sonora. 

From  the  very  start  the  filibusters  were  over- 
whelmed with  disaster.  The  Mexicans,  with 
Indian  allies,  skulked  on  the  flanks  and  rear. 
Men  who  in  the  almost  daily  encounters  were 
killed  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Indians,  and  their 
bodies  were  mutilated.  Stragglers  and  deserters 
were  run  to  earth  and  tortured.  Those  of  the 
filibusters  who  were  wounded  died  from  lack  of 
medical  care.  The  only  instruments  they  pos- 
sessed with  which  to  extract  the  arrow-heads  were 
probes  made  from  ramrods  filed  to  a  point.  Their 
only  food  was  the  cattle  they  killed  on  the  march. 
The  army  was  barefoot,  the  Cabinet  in  rags,  the 
President  of  Sonora  wore  one  boot  and  one  shoe. 


William  Walker 

Unable  to  proceed  farther,  Walker  fell  back  upon 
San  Vincente,  where  he  had  left  the  arms  and 
ammunition  of  the  deserters  and  a  rear-guard  of 
eighteen  men.  He  found  not  one  of  these  to 
welcome  him.  A  dozen  had  deserted,  and  the 
Mexicans  had  surprised  the  rest,  lassoing  them 
and  torturing  them  until  they  died.  Walker  now 
had  but  thirty-five  men.  To  wait  for  further  re- 
enforcements  from  San  Francisco,  even  were  he 
sure  that  re-enforcements  would  come,  was  im- 
possible. He  determined  by  forced  marches  to 
fight  his  way  to  the  boundary  line  of  California. 
Between  him  and  safety  were  the  Mexican  soldiers 
holding  the  passes,  and  the  Indians  hiding  on  his 
flanks.  When  within  three  miles  of  the  boundary 
line,  at  San  Diego,  Colonel  Melendrez,  who  com- 
manded the  Mexican  forces,  sent  in  a  flag  of  truce, 
and  offered,  if  they  would  surrender,  a  safe-con- 
duct to  all  of  the  survivors  of  the  expedition  ex- 
cept the  chief.  But  the  men  who  for  one  year  had 
fought  and  starved  for  Walker,  would  not,  within 
three  miles  of  home,  abandon  him. 

Melendrez  then  begged  the  commander  of  the 
United  States  troops  to  order  Walker  to  surrender. 
Major  McKinstry,  who  was  in  command  of  the 
United  States  Army  Post  at  San  Diego,  refused. 
For  him  to  cross  the  line  would  be  a  violation 

158 


William  Walker 

of  neutral  territory.  On  Mexican  soil  he  would 
neither  embarrass  the  ex-President  of  Sonora  nor 
aid  him;  but  he  saw  to  it  that  if  the  filibusters 
reached  American  soil,  no  Mexican  or  Indian 
should  follow  them. 

Accordingly,  on  the  imaginary  boundary  he 
drew  up  his  troop,  and  like  an  impartial  umpire 
awaited  the  result.  Hidden  behind  rocks  and 
cactus,  across  the  hot,  glaring  plain,  the  filibusters 
could  see  the  American  flag,  and  the  gay,  flutter- 
ing guidons  of  the  cavalry.  The  sight  gave  them 
heart  for  one  last  desperate  spurt.  Melendrez 
also  appreciated  that  for  the  final  attack  the  mo- 
ment had  come.  As  he  charged,  Walker,  appa- 
rently routed,  fled,  but  concealed  in  the  rocks  be- 
hind him  he  had  stationed  a  rear-guard  of  a  dozen 
men.  As  Melendrez  rode  into  this  ambush  the 
dozen  riflemen  emptied  as  many  saddles,  and  the 
Mexicans  and  Indians  stampeded.  A  half  hour 
later,  footsore  and  famished,  the  little  band  that 
had  set  forth  to  found  an  empire  of  slaves,  stag- 
gered across  the  line  and  surrendered  to  the  forces 
of  the  United  States. 

Of  this  expedition  James  Jeffrey  Roche  says, 
in  his  "Byways  of  War,"  which  is  of  all  books 
published  about  Walker  the  most  intensely  and 
fascinatingly  interesting  and  complete:  " Years 


William  Walker 

afterward  the  peon  herdsman  or  prowling  Cocupa 
Indian  in  the  mountain  by-paths  stumbled  over 
the  bleaching  skeleton  of  some  nameless  one  whose 
resting-place  was  marked  by  no  cross  or  cairn, 
but  the  Colts  revolver  resting  beside  his  bones 
spoke  his  country  and  his  occupation — the  only 
relic  of  the  would-be  conquistadores  of  the  nine- 
teenth century." 

Under  parole  to  report  to  General  Wood,  com- 
manding the  Department  of  the  Pacific,  the  fili- 
busters were  sent  by  sailing  vessel  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, where  their  leader  was  tried  for  violating  the 
neutrality  laws  of  the  United  States,  and  acquitted. 

Walker's  first  expedition  had  ended  in  failure, 
but  for  him  it  had  been  an  opportunity  of  tre- 
mendous experience,  as  active  service  is  the  best 
of  all  military  academies,  and  for  the  kind  of 
warfare  he  was  to  wage,  the  best  preparation. 
Nor  was  it  inglorious,  for  his  fellow  survivors, 
contrary  to  the  usual  practice,  instead  of  in  bar- 
rooms placing  the  blame  for  failure  upon  their 
leader,  stood  ready  to  fight  one  and  all  who 
doubted  his  ability  or  his  courage.  Later,  after 
five  years,  many  of  these  same  men,  though  ten  to 
twenty  years  his  senior,  followed  him  to  death, 
and  never  questioned  his  judgment  nor  his  right 
to  command. 

1 60 


General   William   Walker. 


William  Walker 

At  this  time  in  Nicaragua  there  was  the  usual 
revolution.  On  the  south  the  sister  republic  of 
Costa  Rica  was  taking  sides,  on  the  north  Hon- 
duras was  landing  arms  and  men.  There  was  no 
law,  no  government.  A  dozen  political  parties,  a 
dozen  commanding  generals,  and  not  one  strong 
man. 

In  the  editorial  rooms  of  the  San  Francisco 
Herald,  Walker,  searching  the  map  for  new 
worlds  to  conquer,  rested  his  finger  upon  Nica- 
ragua. 

In  its  confusion  of  authority  he  saw  an  oppor- 
tunity to  make  himself  a  power,  and  in  its  trop- 
ical wealth  and  beauty,  in  the  laziness  and  incom- 
petence of  its  inhabitants,  he  beheld  a  greater, 
fairer,  more  kind  Sonora.  On  the  Pacific  side 
from  San  Francisco  he  could  re-enforce  his  army 
with  men  and  arms;  on  the  Caribbean  side  from 
New  Orleans  he  could,  when  the  moment  arrived, 
people  his  empire  with  slaves. 

The  two  parties  at  war  in  Nicaragua  were  the 
Legitimists  and  the  Democrats.  Why  they  were 
at  war  it  is  not  necessary  to  know.  Probably 
Walker  did  not  know;  it  is  not  likely  that  they 
themselves  knew.  But  from  the  leader  of  the 
Democrats  Walker  obtained  a  contract  to  bring 
to  Nicaragua  three  hundred  Americans,  who  were 

161 


William  Walker 

each  to  receive  several  hundred  acres  of  land,  and 
who  were  described  as  "colonists  liable  to  military 
duty."  This  contract  Walker  submitted  to  the 
Attorney-General  of  the  State  and  to  General 
Wood,  who  once  before  had  acquitted  him  of  fili- 
bustering; and  neither  of  these  Federal  officers  saw 
anything  which  seemed  to  give  them  the  right 
to  interfere.  But  the  rest  of  San  Francisco  was 
less  credulous,  and  the  "colonists"  who  joined 
Walker  had  a  very  distinct  idea  that  they  were 
not  going  to  Nicaragua  to  plant  coffee  or  to  pick 
bananas. 

In  May,  1855,  just  a  year  after  Walker  and 
his  thirty-three  followers  had  surrendered  to  the 
United  States  troops  at  San  Diego,  with  fifty 
new  recruits  and  seven  veterans  of  the  former 
expedition  he  sailed  from  San  Francisco  in  the 
brig  Vestay  and  in  five  weeks,  after  a  weary  and 
stormy  voyage,  landed  at  Realejo.  There  he  was 
met  by  representatives  of  the  Provisional  Director 
of  the  Democrats,  who  received  the  Californians 
warmly. 

Walker  was  commissioned  a  colonel,  Achilles 
Kewen,  who  had  been  fighting  under  Lopez  in 
Cuba,  a  lieutenant-colonel,  and  Timothy  Crocker, 
who  had  served  under  Walker  in  the  Sonora  ex- 
pedition, a  major.  The  corps  was  organized  as 

162 


William  Walker 

an  independent  command  and  was  named  "La 
Falange  Americana."  At  this  time  the  enemy 
held  the  route  to  the  Caribbean,  and  Walker's 
first  orders  were  to  dislodge  him. 

Accordingly,  a  week  after  landing  with  his 
fifty-seven  Americans  and  one  hundred  and  fifty 
native  troops,  Walker  sailed  in  the  Vesta  for 
Brito,  from  which  port  he  marched  upon  Rivas, 
a  city  of  eleven  thousand  people  and  garrisoned 
by  some  twelve  hundred  of  the  enemy. 

The  first  fight  ended  in  a  complete  and  disas- 
trous fiasco.  The  native  troops  ran  away,  and 
the  Americans  surrounded  by  six  hundred  of  the 
Legitimists*  soldiers,  after  defending  themselves 
for  three  hours  behind  some  adobe  huts,  charged 
the  enemy  and  escaped  into  the  jungle.  Their 
loss  was  heavy,  and  among  the  killed  were  the 
two  men  upon  whom  Walker  chiefly  depended: 
Kewen  and  Crocker.  The  Legitimists  placed  the 
bodies  of  the  dead  and  wounded  who  were  still 
living  on  a  pile  of  logs  and  burned  them.  After 
a  painful  night  march,  Walker,  the  next  day, 
reached  San  Juan  on  the  coast,  and,  finding  a 
Costa  Rican  schooner  in  port,  seized  it  for  his  use. 
At  this  moment,  although  Walker's  men  were  de- 
feated, bleeding,  and  in  open  flight,  two  "grin- 
gos" picked  up  on  the  beach  of  San  Juan,  "the 

163 


William  Walker 

Texan  Harry  McLeod  and  the  Irishman  Peter 
Burns,"  asked  to  be  permitted  to  join  him. 

"It  was  encouraging,"  Walker  writes,  "for  the 
soldiers  to  find  that  some  besides  themselves  did 
not  regard  their  fortunes  as  altogether  desperate, 
and  small  as  was  this  addition  to  their  number  it 
gave  increased  moral  as  well  as  material  strength 
to  the  command." 

Sometimes  in  reading  history  it  would  appear 
as  though  for  success  the  first  requisite  must  be  an 
utter  lack  of  humor,  and  inability  to  look  upon 
what  one  is  attempting  except  with  absolute  se- 
riousness. With  forty  men  Walker  was  planning 
to  conquer  and  rule  Nicaragua,  a  country  with  a 
population  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
souls  and  as  large  as  the  combined  area  of  Massa- 
chusetts, Vermont,  Rhode  Island,  New  Hamp- 
shire, and  Connecticut.  And  yet,  even  seven 
years  later,  he  records  without  a  smile  that  two 
beach-combers  gave  his  army  "moral  and  material 
strength."  And  it  is  most  characteristic  of  the 
man  that  at  the  moment  he  was  rejoicing  over 
this  addition  to  his  forces,  to  maintain  discipline 
two  Americans  who  had  set  fire  to  the  houses  of 
the  enemy  he  ordered  to  be  shot.  A  weaker 
man  would  have  repudiated  the  two  Americans, 
who,  in  fact,  were  not  members  of  the  Phalanx, 

164 


William  Walker 

and  trusted  that  their  crimes  would  not  be  charged 
against  him.  But  the  success  of  Walker  lay 
greatly  in  his  stern  discipline.  He  tried  the  men, 
and  they  confessed  to  their  guilt.  One  got  away; 
and,  as  it  might  appear  that  Walker  had  connived 
at  his  escape,  to  the  second  man  was  shown  no 
mercy.  When  one  reads  how  severe  was  Walker 
in  his  punishments,  and  how  frequently  the  death 
penalty  was  invoked  by  him  against  his  own 
few  followers,  the  wonder  grows  that  these  men, 
as  independent  and  as  unaccustomed  to  restraint 
as  were  those  who  first  joined  him,  submitted  to 
his  leadership.  One  can  explain  it  only  by  the 
personal  quality  of  Walker  himself. 

Among  these  reckless,  fearless  outlaws,  who, 
despising  their  allies,  believed  and  proved  that 
with  his  rifle  one  American  could  account  for  a 
dozen  Nicaraguans,  Walker  was  the  one  man 
who  did  not  boast  or  drink  or  gamble,  who  did 
not  even  swear,  who  never  looked  at  a  woman, 
and  who,  in  money  matters,  was  scrupulously 
honest  and  unself-seeking.  In  a  fight,  his  fol- 
lowers knew  that  for  them  he  would  risk  being 
shot  just  as  unconcernedly  as  to  maintain  his 
authority  he  would  shoot  one  of  them. 

Treachery,  cowardice,  looting,  any  indignity  to 
women,  he  punished  with  death;  but  to  the 

165 


William  Walker 

wounded,  either  of  his  own  or  of  the  enemy's 
forces,  he  was  as  gentle  as  a  nursing  sister;  and 
the  brave  and  able  he  rewarded  with  instant  pro- 
motion and  higher  pay.  In  no  one  trait  was  he 
a  demagogue.  One  can  find  no  effort  on  his  part 
to  ingratiate  himself  with  his  men.  Among  the 
officers  of  his  staff  there  were  no  favorites.  He 
messed  alone,  and  at  all  times  kept  to  himself. 
He  spoke  little,  and  then  with  utter  lack  of  self- 
consciousness.  In  the  face  of  injustice,  perjury, 
or  physical  danger,  he  was  always  calm,  firm, 
dispassionate.  But  it  is  said  that  on  those  in- 
frequent occasions  when  his  anger  asserted  itself, 
the  steady  steel-gray  eyes  flashed  so  menacingly 
that  those  who  faced  them  would  as  soon  look 
down  the  barrel  of  his  Colt. 

The  impression  one  gets  of  him  gathered  from 
his  recorded  acts,  from  his  own  writings,  from  the 
writings  of  those  who  fought  with  him,  is  of  a  silent, 
student-like  young  man  believing  religiously  in 
his  "star  of  destiny";  but,  in  all  matters  that  did 
not  concern  himself,  possessed  of  a  grim  sense  of 
fun.  The  sayings  of  his  men  that  in  his  history 
of  the  war  he  records,  show  a  distinct  apprecia- 
tion of  the  Bret  Harte  school  of  humor.  As,  for 
instance,  when  he  tells  how  he  wished  to  make 
one  of  them  a  drummer  boy  and  the  Californian 

166 


William  Walker 

drawled:  "No,  thanks,  colonel;  I  never  seen  a 
picture  of  a  battle  yet  that  the  first  thing  in  it 
wasn't  a  dead  drummer  boy  with  a  busted  drum." 

In  Walker  the  personal  vanity  which  is  so 
characteristic  of  the  soldier  of  fortune  was  utterly 
lacking.  In  a  land  where  a  captain  bedecks  him- 
self like  a  field-marshal,  Walker  wore  his  trousers 
stuffed  in  his  boots,  a  civilian's  blue  frock-coat, 
and  the  slouch  hat  of  the  period,  with,  for  his 
only  ornament,  the  red  ribbon  of  the  Democrats. 
The  authority  he  wielded  did  not  depend  upon 
braid  or  buttons,  and  only  when  going  into  battle 
did  he  wear  his  sword.  In  appearance  he  was 
slightly  built,  rather  below  the  medium  height, 
smooth  shaven,  and  with  deep-set  gray  eyes. 
These  eyes  apparently,  as  they  gave  him  his  nick- 
name, were  his  most  marked  feature. 

His  followers  called  him,  and  later,  when  he 
was  thirty-two  years  old,  he  was  known  all  over 
the  United  States  as  the  "Gray-Eyed  Man  of 
Destiny." 

From  the  first  Walker  recognized  that  in  order 
to  establish  himself  in  Nicaragua  he  must  keep  in 
touch  with  all  possible  recruits  arriving  from  San 
Francisco  and  New  York,  and  that  to  do  this  he 
must  hold  the  line  of  transit  from  the  Caribbean 
Sea  to  the  Pacific.  At  this  time  the  sea  routes  to 

167 


William  Walker 

the  gold-fields  were  three:  by  sailing  vessel  around 
the  Cape,  one  over  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  and 
one,  which  was  the  shortest,  across  Nicaragua. 
By  a  charter  from  the  Government  of  Nicaragua, 
the  right  to  transport  passengers  across  this  isth- 
mus was  controlled  by  the  Accessory  Transit 
Company,  of  which  the  first  Cornelius  Vander- 
bilt  was  president.  His  company  owned  a  line 
of  ocean  steamers  both  on  the  Pacific  side  and 
on  the  Atlantic  side.  Passengers  en  route  from 
New  York  to  the  gold-fields  were  landed  by  these 
latter  steamers  at  Greytown  on  the  west  coast  of 
Nicaragua,  and  sent  by  boats  of  light  draught 
up  the  San  Juan  River  to  Lake  Nicaragua.  There 
they  were  met  by  larger  lake  steamers  and  con- 
veyed across  the  lake  to  Virgin  Bay.  From  that 
point,  in  carriages  and  on  mule  back,  they  were 
carried  twelve  miles  overland  to  the  port  of  San 
Juan  del  Sud  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  where  they 
boarded  the  company's  steamers  to  San  Francisco. 

During  the  year  of  Walker's  occupation  the 
number  of  passengers  crossing  Nicaragua  was  an 
average  of  about  two  thousand  a  month. 

It  was  to  control  this  route  that  immediately 
after  his  first  defeat  Walker  returned  to  San 
Juan  del  Sud,  and  in  a  smart  skirmish  defeated 
the  enemy  and  secured  possession  of  Virgin  Bay, 

168 


William  Walker 

the  halting  place  for  the  passengers  going  east  or 
west.  In  this  fight  Walker  was  outnumbered 
five  to  one,  but  his  losses  were  only  three  natives 
killed  and  a  few  Americans  wounded.  The  Le- 
gitimists lost  sixty  killed  and  a  hundred  wounded. 
This  proportion  of  losses  shows  how  fatally  effec- 
tive was  the  rifle  and  revolver  fire  of  the  Cali- 
fornians.  Indeed,  so  wonderful  was  it  that  when 
some  years  ago  I  visited  the  towns  and  cities 
captured  by  the  filibusters,  I  found  that  the  marks- 
manship of  Walker's  Phalanx  was  still  a  tra- 
dition. Indeed,  thanks  to  the  filibusters,  to-day 
in  any  part  of  Central  America  a  man  from  the 
States,  if  in  trouble,  has  only  to  show  his  gun. 
No  native  will  wait  for  him  to  fire  it. 

After  the  fight  at  Virgin  Bay,  Walker  received 
from  California  fifty  recruits — a  very  welcome 
addition  to  his  force,  and  as  he  now  commanded 
about  one  hundred  and  twenty  Americans,  three 
hundred  Nicaraguans,  under  a  friendly  native, 
General  Valle,  and  two  brass  cannon,  he  decided 
to  again  attack  Rivas.  Rivas  is  on  the  lake  just 
above  Virgin  Bay;  still  further  up  is  Granada, 
which  was  the  head-quarters  of  the  Legitimists. 

Fearing  Walker's  attack  upon  Rivas,  the  Legiti- 
mist troops  were  hurried  south  from  Granada  to 
that  city,  leaving  Granada  but  slightly  protected. 

169 


William  Walker 

Through  intercepted  letters  Walker  learned  of  this 
and  determined  to  strike  at  Granada.  By  night, 
in  one  of  the  lake  steamers,  he  skirted  the  shore, 
and  just  before  daybreak,  with  fires  banked  and 
all  lights  out,  drew  up  to  a  point  near  the  city. 
The  day  previous  the  Legitimists  had  gained  a 
victory,  and,  as  good  luck  or  Walker's  "destiny" 
would  have  it,  the  night  before  Granada  had  been 
celebrating  the  event.  Much  joyous  dancing  and 
much  drinking  of  aguardiente  had  buried  the  in- 
habitants in  a  drugged  slumber.  The  garrison 
slept,  the  sentries  slept,  the  city  slept.  But  when 
the  convent  bells  called  for  early  mass,  the  air 
was  shaken  with  sharp  reports  that  to  the  ears  of 
the  Legitimists  were  unfamiliar  and  disquieting. 
They  were  not  the  loud  explosions  of  their  own 
muskets  nor  of  the  smooth  bores  of  the  Democrats. 
The  sounds  were  sharp  and  cruel  like  the  crack 
of  a  whip.  The  sentries  flying  from  their  posts 
disclosed  the  terrifying  truth.  "The  Filibusre- 
ros!"  they  cried.  Following  them  at  a  gallop 
came  Walker  and  Valle  and  behind  them  the  men 
of  the  awful  Phalanx,  whom  already  the  natives 
had  learned  to  fear:  the  bearded  giants  in  red 
flannel  shirts  who  at  Rivas  on  foot  had  charged 
the  artillery  with  revolvers,  who  at  Virgin  Bay 
when  wounded  had  drawn  from  their  boots  glit- 

170 


William  Walker 

tering  bowie  knives  and  hurled  them  like  arrows, 
who  at  all  times  shot  with  the  accuracy  of  the 
hawk  falling  upon  a  squawking  hen. 

There  was  a  brief  terrified  stand  in  the  Plaza, 
and  then  a  complete  rout.  As  was  their  custom, 
the  native  Democrats  began  at  once  to  loot  the 
city.  But  Walker  put  his  sword  into  the  first 
one  of  these  he  met,  and  ordered  the  Americans  to 
arrest  all  others  found  stealing,  and  to  return  the 
goods  already  stolen.  Over  a  hundred  political 
prisoners  in  the  cartel  were  released  by  Walker, 
and  the  ball  and  chain  to  which  each  was  fas- 
tened stricken  off.  More  than  two-thirds  of  them 
at  once  enlisted  under  Walker's  banner. 

He  now  was  in  a  position  to  dictate  to  the  en- 
emy his  own  terms  of  peace,  but  a  fatal  blunder 
on  the  part  of  Parker  H.  French,  a  lieutenant 
of  Walker's,  postponed  peace  for  several  weeks, 
and  led  to  unfortunate  reprisals.  French  had 
made  an  unauthorized  and  unsuccessful  assault 
on  San  Carlos  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  lake,  and 
the  Legitimists  retaliated  at  Virgin  Bay  by  killing 
half  a  dozen  peaceful  passengers,  and  at  San  Car- 
los by  firing  at  a  transit  steamer.  For  this  the 
excuse  of  the  Legitimists  was,  that  now  that 

o  7 

Walker  was  using  the  lake  steamers  as  transports 
it  was  impossible  for  them  to  know  whether  the 

171 


William  Walker 

boats  were  occupied  by  his  men  or  neutral  passen- 
gers. As  he  could  not  reach  the  guilty  ones, 
Walker  held  responsible  for  their  acts  their  secre- 
tary of  state,  who  at  the  taking  of  Granada  was 
among  the  prisoners.  He  was  tried  by  court-mar- 
tial and  shot,  "a  victim  of  the  new  interpretation 
of  the  principles  of  constitutional  government." 
While  this  act  of  Walker's  was  certainly  stretching 
the  theory  of  responsibility  to  the  breaking  point, 
its  immediate  effect  was  to  bring  about  a  hasty 
surrender  and  a  meeting  between  the  generals 
of  the  two  political  parties.  Thus,  four  months 
after  Walker  and  his  fifty-seven  followers  landed 
in  Nicaragua,  a  suspension  of  hostilities  was  ar- 
ranged, and  the  side  for  which  the  Americans 

O         ' 

had  fought  was  in  power.  Walker  was  made 
commander-in-chief  of  an  army  of  twelve  hundred 
men  with  salary  of  six  thousand  dollars  a  year. 
A  man  named  Rivas  was  appointed  temporary 
president. 

To  Walker  this  pause  in  the  fight  was  most 
welcome.  It  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  enlist 
recruits  and  to  organize  his  men  for  the  better 
accomplishment  of  what  was  the  real  object  of  his 
going  to  Nicaragua.  He  now  had  under  him  a 
remarkable  force,  one  of  the  most  effective  known 
to  military  history.  For  although  six  months  had 

172 


William  Walker 

not  yet  passed,  the  organization  he  now  commanded 
was  as  unlike  the  Phalanx  of  the  fifty-eight  ad- 
venturers who  were  driven  back  at  Rivas,  as  were 
FalstafFs  followers  from  the  regiment  of  picked 
men  commanded  by  Colonel  Roosevelt.  Instead 
of  the  undisciplined  and  lawless  now  being  in  the 
majority,  the  ranks  were  filled  with  the  pick  of 
the  California  mining  camps,  with  veterans  of  the 
Mexican  War,  with  young  Southerners  of  birth 
and  spirit,  and  with  soldiers  of  fortune  from  all 
of  the  great  armies  of  Europe. 

In  the  Civil  War,  which  so  soon  followed,  and 
later  in  the  service  of  the  Khedive  of  Egypt,  were 
several  of  Walker's  officers,  and  for  years  after 
his  death  there  was  no  war  in  which  one  of  the 
men  trained  by  him  in  the  jungles  of  Nicaragua 
did  not  distinguish  himself.  In  his  memoirs,  the 
Englishman,  General  Charles  Frederic  Henning- 
sen,  writes  that  though  he  had  taken  part  in  some 
of  the  greatest  battles  of  the  Civil  War  he  would 
pit  a  thousand  men  of  Walker's  command  against 
any  five  thousand  Confederate  or  Union  soldiers. 
And  General  Henningsen  was  one  who  spoke 
with  authority.  Before  he  joined  Walker  he  had 
served  in  Spain  under  Don  Carlos,  in  Hungary 
under  Kossuth,  and  in  Bulgaria. 

Of  Walker's  men,  a  regiment  of  which  he  com- 


William  Walker 

manded,  he  writes:  "I  often  have  seen  them 
march  with  a  broken  or  compound  fractured  arm 
in  splints,  and  using  the  other  to  fire  the  rifle 
or  revolver.  Those  with  a  fractured  thigh  or 
wounds  which  rendered  them  incapable  of  re- 
moval, shot  themselves.  Such  men  do  not  turn 
up  in  the  average  of  everyday  life,  nor  do  I  ever 
expect  to  see  their  like  again.  All  military  sci- 
ence failed  on  a  suddenly  given  field  before  such 
assailants,  who  came  at  a  run  to  close  with  their 
revolvers  and  who  thought  little  of  charging  a 
gun  battery,  pistol  in  hand." 

Another  graduate  of  Walker's  army  was  Cap- 
tain Fred  Townsend  Ward,  a  native  of  Salem, 
Mass.,  who  after  the  death  of  Walker  organized 
and  led  the  ever  victorious  army  that  put  down 
the  Tai-Ping  rebellion,  and  performed  the  many 
feats  of  martial  glory  for  which  Chinese  Gordon 
received  the  credit.  In  Shanghai,  to  the  memory 
of  the  filibuster,  there  are  to-day  two  temples  in 
his  honor. 

Joaquin  Miller,  the  poet,  miner,  and  soldier, 
who  but  recently  was  a  picturesque  figure  on  the 
hotel  porch  at  Saratoga  Springs,  was  one  of  the 
young  Californians  who  was  "out  with  Walker," 
and  who  later  in  his  career  by  his  verse  helped 
to  preserve  the  name  of  his  beloved  commander. 


William  Walker 

I.  C.  Jamison,  living  to-day  in  Guthrie,  Okla- 
homa, was  a  captain  under  Walker.  When  war 
again  came,  as  it  did  within  four  months,  these 
were  the  men  who  made  Walker  President  of 
Nicaragua. 

During  the  four  months  in  all  but  title  he  had 
been  president,  and  as  such  he  was  recognized 
and  feared.  It  was  against  him,  not  Rivas,  that 
in  February,  1856,  the  neighboring  republic  of 
Costa  Rica  declared  war.  For  three  months  this 
war  continued  with  varying  fortunes  until  the 
Costa  Ricans  were  driven  across  the  border. 

In  June  of  the  same  year  Rivas  called  a  gen- 
eral election  for  president,  announcing  himself 
as  the  candidate  of  the  Democrats.  Two  other 
Democrats  also  presented  themselves,  Salazar  and 
Ferrer.  The  Legitimists,  recognizing  in  their  for- 
mer enemy  the  real  ruler  of  the  country,  nominated 
Walker.  By  an  overwhelming  majority  he  was 
elected,  receiving  15,835  votes  to  867  cast  for 
Rivas.  Salazar  received  2,087;  Ferrer,  4,447. 

Walker  now  was  the  legal  as  well  as  the  actual 
ruler  of  the  country,  and  at  no  time  in  its  history, 
as  during  Walker's  administration,  was  Nicaragua 
governed  so  justly,  so  wisely,  and  so  well.  But 
in  his  success  the  neighboring  republics  saw  a 
menace  to  their  own  independence.  To  the  four 


William  Walker 

other  republics  of  Central  America  the  five-pointed 
blood-red  star  on  the  flag  of  the  filibusters  bore 
a  sinister  motto:  "Five  or  None."  The  mean- 
ing was  only  too  unpleasantly  obvious.  At  once, 
Costa  Rica  on  the  south,  and  Guatemala,  Salva- 
dor, and  Honduras  from  the  north,  with  the  mal- 
contents of  Nicaragua,  declared  war  against  the 
foreign  invader.  Again  Walker  was  in  the  field 
with  opposed  to  him  21,000  of  the  allies.  The 
strength  of  his  own  force  varied.  On  his  elec- 
tion as  president  the  backbone  of  his  army  was  a 
magnificently  trained  body  of  veterans  to  the  num- 
ber of  2,000.  This  was  later  increased  to  3,500, 
but  it  is  doubtful  if  at  any  one  time  it  ever  ex- 
ceeded that  number.  His  muster  and  hospital 
rolls  show  that  during  his  entire  occupation  of 
Nicaragua  there  were  enlisted,  at  one  time  or  an- 
other, under  his  banner  10,000  men.  While  in 
his  service,  of  this  number,  by  hostile  shots  or 
fever,  5,000  died. 

To  describe  the  battles  with  the  allies  would  be 
interminable  and  wearying.  In  every  particular 
they  are  much  alike:  the  long  silent  night  march, 
the  rush  at  daybreak,  the  fight  to  gain  strategic 
positions  either  of  the  barracks,  or  of  the  Cathe- 
dral in  the  Plaza,  the  hand-to-hand  fighting  from 
behind  barricades  and  adobe  walls.  The  out- 

176 


William  Walker 

come  of  these  fights  sometimes  varied,  but  the 
final  result  was  never  in  doubt,  and  had  no  out- 
side influences  intervened,  in  time  each  republic 
in  Central  America  would  have  come  under  the 
five-pointed  star. 

In  Costa  Rica  there  is  a  marble  statue  show- 
ing that  republic  represented  as  a  young  woman 
with  her  foot  upon  the  neck  of  Walker.  Some 
night  a  truth-loving  American  will  place  a  can  of 
dynamite  at  the  foot  of  that  statue,  and  walk 
hurriedly  away.  Unaided,  neither  Costa  Rica 
nor  any  other  Central  American  republic  could 
have  driven  Walker  from  her  soil.  His  downfall 
came  through  his  own  people,  and  through  an  act 
of  his  which  provoked  them. 

When  Walker  was  elected  president  he  found 
that  the  Accessory  Transit  Company  had  not 
lived  up  to  the  terms  of  its  concession  with  the 
Nicaraguan  Government.  His  efforts  to  hold  it 
to  the  terms  of  its  concession  led  to  his  overthrow. 
By  its  charter  the  Transit  Company  agreed  to  pay 
to  Nicaragua  ten  thousand  dollars  annually  and 
ten  per  cent,  of  the  net  profits;  but  the  company, 
whose  history  the  United  States  Minister,  Squire, 
characterized  as  "an  infamous  career  of  decep- 
tion and  fraud,"  manipulated  its  books  in  such  a 
fashion  as  to  show  that  there  never  were  any 

177 


William  Walker 

profits.  Doubting  this,  Walker  sent  a  commis- 
sion to  New  York  to  investigate.  The  commis- 
sion discovered  the  fraud  and  demanded  in  back 
payments  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dol- 
lars. When  the  company  refused  to  pay  this,  as 
security  for  the  debt  Walker  seized  its  steamers, 
wharves,  and  storehouses,  revoked  its  charter,  and 
gave  a  new  charter  to  two  of  its  directors,  Mor- 
gan and  Garrison,  who,  in  San  Francisco,  were 
working  against  Vanderbilt.  In  doing  this,  while 
he  was  legally  in  the  right,  he  committed  a  fatal 
error.  He  had  made  a  powerful  enemy  of  Van- 
derbilt, and  he  had  shut  off  his  only  lines  of 
communication  with  the  United  States.  For, 
enraged  at  the  presumption  of  the  filibuster  pres- 
ident, Vanderbilt  withdrew  his  ocean  steamers, 
thus  leaving  Walker  without  men  or  ammunition, 
and  as  isolated  as  though  upon  a  deserted  island. 
He  possessed  Vanderbilt's  boats  upon  the  San 
Juan  River  and  Nicaragua  Lake,  but  they  were 
of  use  to  him  only  locally. 

His  position  was  that  of  a  man  holding  the 
centre  span  of  a  bridge  of  which  every  span  on 
either  side  of  him  has  been  destroyed. 

Vanderbilt  did  not  rest  at  withdrawing  his 
steamers,  but  by  supporting  the  Costa  Ricans 
with  money  and  men,  carried  the  war  into  Central 

178 


William  Walker 

America.  From  Washington  he  fought  Walker 
through  Secretary  of  State  Marcy,  who  proved 
a  willing  tool. 

Spencer  and  Webster,  and  the  other  soldiers  of 
fortune  employed  by  Vanderbilt,  closed  the  route 
on  the  Caribbean  side,  and  the  man-of-war  St. 
Marys,  commanded  by  Captain  Davis,  was  or- 
dered to  San  Juan  on  the  Pacific  side.  The  in- 
structions given  to  Captain  Davis  were  to  aid 
the  allies  in  forcing  Walker  out  of  Nicaragua. 
Walker  claims  that  these  orders  were  given  to 
Marcy  by  Vanderbilt  and  by  Marcy  to  Commo- 
dore Mervin,  who  was  Marcy's  personal  friend 
and  who  issued  them  to  Davis.  Davis  claims 
that  he  acted  only  in  the  interest  of  humanity  to 
save  Walker  in  spite  of  himself.  In  any  event, 
the  result  was  the  same.  Walker,  his  force  cut 
down  by  hostile  shot  and  fever  and  desertion, 
took  refuge  in  Rivas,  where  he  was  besieged  by 
the  allied  armies.  There  was  no  bread  in  the  city. 
The  men  were  living  on  horse  and  mule  meat. 

O 

There  was  no  salt.  The  hospital  was  filled  with 
wounded  and  those  stricken  with  fever. 

Captain  Davis,  in  the  name  of  humanity,  de- 
manded Walker's  surrender  to  the  United  States. 
Walker  told  him  he  would  not  surrender,  but  that 
if  the  time  came  when  he  found  he  must  fly,  he 

179 


William  Walker 

would  do  so  in  his  own  little  schooner  of  war,  the 
Granada,  which  constituted  his  entire  navy,  and 
in  her,  as  a  free  man,  take  his  forces  where  he 
pleased.  Then  Davis  informed  Walker  that  the 
force  Walker  had  sent  to  recapture  the  Greytown 
route  had  been  defeated  by  the  janizaries  of 
Vanderbilt;  that  the  steamers  from  San  Francisco, 
on  which  Walker  now  counted  to  bring  him  re- 
enforcements,  had  also  been  taken  off  the  line, 
and  finally  that  it  was  his  "unalterable  and  de- 
liberate intention"  to  seize  the  Granada.  On 
this  point  his  orders  left  him  no  choice.  The 
Granada  was  the  last  means  of  transportation  still 
left  to  Walker.  He  had  hoped  to  make  a  sortie 
and  on  board  her  to  escape  from  the  country. 
But  with  his  ship  taken  from  him  and  no  longer 
able  to  sustain  the  siege  of  the  allies,  he  surren- 
dered to  the  forces  of  the  United  States.  In  the 
agreement  drawn  up  by  him  and  Davis,  Walker 
provided  for  the  care,  by  Davis,  of  the  sick  and 
wounded,  for  the  protection  after  his  departure 
of  the  natives  who  had  fought  with  him,  and  for 
the  transportation  of  himself  and  officers  to  the 
United  States. 

On  his  arrival  in  New  York  he  received  a  wel- 
come such  as  later  was  extended  to  Kossuth,  and, 
in  our  own  day,  to  Admiral  Dewey.  The  city 

180 


William  Walker 

was  decorated  with  flags  and  arches;  and  ban- 
quets, fetes,  and  public  meetings  were  everywhere 
held  in  his  honor.  Walker  received  these  demon- 
strations modestly,  and  on  every  public  occasion 
announced  his  determination  to  return  to  the 
country  of  which  he  was  the  president,  and  from 
which  by  force  he  had  been  driven.  At  Washing- 
ton, where  he  went  to  present  his  claims,  he  re- 
ceived scant  encouragement.  His  protest  against 
Captain  Davis  was  referred  to  Congress,  where  it 
was  allowed  to  die. 

Within  a  month  Walker  organized  an  expedi- 
tion with  which  to  regain  his  rights  in  Nicaragua, 
and  as,  in  his  new  constitution  for  that  country, 
he  had  annulled  the  old  law  abolishing  slavery, 
among  the  slave-holders  of  the  South  he  found 
enough  money  and  recruits  to  enable  him  to  at 
once  leave  the  United  States.  With  one  hundred 
and  fifty  men  he  sailed  from  New  Orleans  and 
landed  at  San  del  Norte  on  the  Caribbean  side. 
While  he  formed  a  camp  on  the  harbor  of  San 
Juan,  one  of  his  officers,  with  fifty  men,  proceeded 
up  the  river  and,  capturing  the  town  of  Castillo 
Viejo  and  four  of  the  Transit  steamers,  was  in  a 
fair  way  to  obtain  possession  of  the  entire  route. 
At  this  moment  upon  the  scene  arrived  the  United 
States  frigate  Wabash  and  Hiram  Paulding,  who 

181 


William  Walker 

landed  a  force  of  three  hundred  and  fifty  blue- 
jackets with  howitzers,  and  turned  the  guns  of 
his  frigate  upon  the  camp  of  the  President  of  Nic- 
aragua. Captain  Engel,  who  presented  the  terms 
of  surrender  to  Walker,  said  to  him:  "General, 
I  am  sorry  to  see  you  here.  A  man  like  you  is 
worthy  to  command  better  men."  To  which 
Walker  replied  grimly:  "If  I  had  a  third  the 
number  you  have  brought  against  me,  I  would 
show  you  which  of  us  two  commands  the  better 
men." 

For  the  third  time  in  his  history  Walker  sur- 
rendered to  the  armed  forces  of  his  own  country. 

On  his  arrival  in  the  United  States,  in  fulfil- 
ment of  his  parole  to  Paulding,  Walker  at  once 
presented  himself  at  Washington  a  prisoner  of  war. 
But  President  Buchanan,  although  Paulding  had 
acted  exactly  as  Davis  had  done,  refused  to  sup- 
port him,  and  in  a  message  to  Congress  declared 
that  that  officer  had  committed  a  grave  error  and 
established  an  unsafe  precedent. 

On  the  strength  of  this  Walker  demanded  of 
the  United  States  Government  indemnity  for  his 
losses,  and  that  it  should  furnish  him  and  his 
followers  transportation  even  to  the  very  camp 
from  which  its  representatives  had  torn  him.  This 
demand,  as  Walker  foresaw,  was  not  considered 

182 


William  Walker 

seriously,  and  with  a  force  of  about  one  hundred 
men,  among  whom  were  many  of  his  veterans, 
he  again  set  sail  from  New  Orleans.  Owing  to 
the  fact  that,  to  prevent  his  return,  there  now 
were  on  each  side  of  the  Isthmus  both  American 
and  British  men-of-war,  Walker,  with  the  idea 
of  reaching  Nicaragua  by  land,  stopped  off  at 
Honduras.  In  his  war  with  the  allies  the  Hondu- 
ranians had  been  as  savage  in  their  attacks  upon 
his  men  as  even  the  Costa  Ricans,  and  finding 
his  old  enemies  now  engaged  in  a  local  revolution, 
on  landing,  Walker  declared  for  the  weaker  side 
and  captured  the  important  seaport  of  Trujillo. 
He  no  sooner  had  taken  it  than  the  British  war- 
ship Icarus  anchored  in  the  harbor,  and  her  com- 
manding officer,  Captain  Salmon,  notified  Walker 
that  the  British  Government  held  a  mortgage  on 
the  revenues  of  the  port,  and  that  to  protect  the 
interests  of  his  Government  he  intended  to  take 
the  town.  Walker  answered  that  he  had  made 
Trujillo  a  free  port,  and  that  Great  Britain's 
claims  no  longer  existed. 

The  British  officer  replied  that  if  Walker  sur- 
rendered himself  and  his  men  he  would  carry 
them  as  prisoners  to  the  United  States,  and  that 
if  he  did  not,  he  would  bombard  the  town.  At 
this  moment  General  Alvarez,  with  seven  hun- 

183 


William  Walker 

dred  Honduranians,  from  the  land  side  surrounded 
Trujillo,  and  prepared  to  attack.  Against  such 
odds  by  sea  and  land  Walker  was  helpless,  and  he 
determined  to  fly.  That  night,  with  seventy  men, 
he  left  the  town  and  proceeded  down  the  coast 
toward  Nicaragua.  The  Icarus,  having  taken  on 
board  Alvarez,  started  in  pursuit.  The  President 
of  Nicaragua  was  found  in  a  little  Indian  fishing 
village,  and  Salmon  sent  in  his  shore-boats  and 
demanded  his  surrender.  On  leaving  Trujillo, 
Walker  had  been  forced  to  abandon  all  his  ammu- 
nition save  thirty  rounds  a  man,  and  all  of  his 
food  supplies  excepting  two  barrels  of  bread. 
On  the  coast  of  this  continent  there  is  no  spot 
more  unhealthy  than  Honduras,  and  when  the 
Englishmen  entered  the  fishing  village  they  found 
Walker's  seventy  men  lying  in  the  palm  huts  help- 
less with  fever,  and  with  no  stomach  to  fight  Brit- 
ish blue-jackets  with  whom  they  had  no  quarrel. 
Walker  inquired  of  Salmon  if  he  were  asking  him 
to  surrender  to  the  British  or  to  the  Honduranian 
forces,  and  twice  Salmon  assured  him,  "distinctly 
and  specifically,"  that  he  was  surrendering  to  the 
forces  of  her  Majesty.  With  this  understanding 
Walker  and  his  men  laid  down  their  arms  and 
were  conveyed  to  the  Icarus.  But  on  arriving  at 
Trujillo,  in  spite  of  their  protests  and  demands  for 

184 


William  Walker 


trial  by  a  British  tribunal,  Salmon  turned  over 
his  prisoners  to  the  Honduranian  general.  What 
excuse  for  this  is  now  given  by  his  descendants  in 


TTc'"e          s   T  A   T    e    a 


Routes  of  Walker's  Three  Filibustering  Expeditions 

the  Salmon  family  I  do  not  know.  Probably  it  is 
a  subject  they  avoid,  and,  in  history,  Salmon's 
version  has  never  been  given,  which  for  him,  per- 
haps, is  an  injustice.  But  the  fact  remains  that 

185 


William  Walker 

he  turned  over  his  white  brothers  to  the  mercies 
of  half-Indian,  half-negro,  savages,  who  were  not 
allies  of  Great  Britain,  and  in  whose  quarrels 
she  had  no  interest.  And  Salmon  did  this,  know- 
ing there  could  be  but  one  end.  If  he  did  not 
know  it,  his  stupidity  equalled  what  now  ap- 
pears to  be  heartless  indifference.  So  far  as  to 
secure  pardon  for  all  except  the  leader  and  one 
faithful  follower,  Colonel  Rudler  of  the  famous 
Phalanx,  Salmon  did  use  his  authority,  and  he 
offered,  if  Walker  would  ask  as  an  American  citi- 
zen, to  intercede  for  him.  But  Walker,  with  a 
distinct  sense  of  loyalty  to  the  country  he  had  con- 
quered, and  whose  people  had  honored  him  with 
their  votes,  refused  to  accept  life  from  the  country 
of  his  birth,  the  country  that  had  injured  and  re- 
pudiated him. 

Even  in  his  extremity,  abandoned  and  alone  on 
a  strip  of  glaring  coral  and  noisome  swamp  land, 
surrounded  only  by  his  enemies,  he  remained  true 
to  his  ideal. 

At  thirty-seven  life  is  very  sweet,  many  things 
still  seem  possible,  and  before  him,  could  his 
life  be  spared,  Walker  beheld  greater  conquests, 
more  power,  a  new  South  controlling  a  Nicaragua 
canal,  a  network  of  busy  railroads,  great  squad- 
rons of  merchant  vessels,  himself  emperor  of  Cen- 

186 


William  Walker 

tral  America.  On  the  gunboat  the  gold-braided 
youth  had  but  to  raise  his  hand,  and  Walker 
again  would  be  a  free  man.  But  the  gold-braided 
one  would  render  this  service  only  on  the  condition 
that  Walker  would  appeal  to  him  as  an  Ameri- 
can; it  was  not  enough  that  Walker  was  a  human 
being.  The  condition  Walker  could  not  grant. 

"The  President  of  Nicaragua,"  he  said,  "is  a 
citizen  of  Nicaragua." 

They  led  him  out  at  sunrise  to  a  level  piece  of 
sand  along  the  beach,  and  as  the  priest  held  the 
crucifix  in  front  of  him  he  spoke  to  his  execution- 
ers in  Spanish,  simply  and  gravely:  "I  die  a 
Roman  Catholic.  In  making  war  upon  you  at 
the  invitation  of  the  people  of  Ruatan  I  was 
wrong.  Of  your  people  I  ask  pardon.  I  accept 
my  punishment  with  resignation.  I  would  like 
to  think  my  death  will  be  for  the  good  of  society." 

From  a  distance  of  twenty  feet  three  soldiers 
fired  at  him,  but,  although  each  shot  took  effect, 
Walker  was  not  dead.  So,  a  sergeant  stooped, 
and  with  a  pistol  killed  the  man  who  would  have 
made  him  one  of  an  empire  of  slaves. 

Had  Walker  lived  four  years  longer  to  exhibit 
upon  the  great  board  of  the  Civil  War  his  ability 
as  a  general,  he  would,  I  believe,  to-day  be  ranked 
as  one  of  America's  greatest  fighting  men. 

187 


William  Walker 

And  because  the  people  of  his  own  day  de- 
stroyed him  is  no  reason  that  we  should  with- 
hold from  this  American,  the  greatest  of  all  fili- 
busters, the  recognition  of  his  genius. 


188 


MAJOR  BURNHAM,  CHIEF 
OF  SCOUTS 


MAJOR   BURNHAM,   CHIEF   OF   SCOUTS 

AMONG  the  Soldiers  of  Fortune  whose  stories 
have  been  told  in  this  book  were  men  who 
are  no  longer  living,  men  who,  to  the  United 
States,  are  strangers,  and  men  who  were  of  in- 
terest chiefly  because  in  what  they  attempted 
they  failed. 

The  subject  of  this  article  is  none  of  these. 
His  adventures  are  as  remarkable  as  any  that  ever 
led  a  small  boy  to  dig  behind  the  barn  for  buried 
treasure,  or  stalk  Indians  in  the  orchard.  But 
entirely  apart  from  his  adventures  he  obtains  our 
interest  because  in  what  he  has  attempted  he  has 
not  failed,  because  he  is  one  of  our  own  people, 
one  of  the  earliest  and  best  types  of  American, 
and  because,  so  far  from  being  dead  and  buried, 
he  is  at  this  moment  very  much  alive,  and  en- 
gaged in  Mexico  in  searching  for  a  buried  city. 
For  exercise,  he  is  alternately  chasing,  or  being 
chased  by,  Yaqui  Indians. 

In  his  home  in  Pasadena,  Cal.,  where  some- 
times he  rests  quietly  for  almost  a  week  at  a  time, 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

the  neighbors  know  him  as  "Fred"  Burnharn. 
In  England  the  newspapers  crowned  him  "The 
King  of  Scouts."  Later,  when  he  won  an  official 
title,  they  called  him  "Major  Frederick  Russell 
Burnham,  D.  S.  O." 

Some  men  are  born  scouts,  others  by  training 
become  scouts.  From  his  father  Burnham  in- 
herited his  instinct  for  wood-craft,  and  to  this 
instinct,  which  in  him  is  as  keen  as  in  a  wild  deer 
or  a  mountain  lion,  he  has  added,  in  the  jungle 
and  on  the  prairie  and  mountain  ranges,  years  of 
the  hardest,  most  relentless  schooling.  In  those 
years  he  has  trained  himself  to  endure  the  most 
appalling  fatigues,  hunger,  thirst,  and  wounds; 
has  subdued  the  brain  to  infinite  patience,  has 
learned  to  force  every  nerve  in  his  body  to  abso- 
lute obedience,  to  still  even  the  beating  of  his 
heart.  Indeed,  than  Burnham  no  man  of  my  ac- 
quaintance to  my  knowledge  has  devoted  himself 
to  his  life's  work  more  earnestly,  more  honestly, 
and  with  such  single-mindedness  of  purpose.  To 
him  scouting  is  as  exact  a  study  as  is  the  piano 
to  Paderewski,  with  the  result  that  to-day  what 
the  Pole  is  to  other  pianists,  the  American  is  to 
all  other  "trackers,"  woodmen,  and  scouts.  He 
reads  "the  face  of  Nature"  as  you  read  your 
morning  paper.  To  him  a  movement  of  his 

192 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

horse's  ears  is  as  plain  a  warning  as  the  "Go 
SLOW"  of  an  automobile  sign;  and  he  so  saves 
from  ambush  an  entire  troop.  In  the  glitter  of  a 
piece  of  quartz  in  the  firelight  he  discovers  King 
Solomon's  mines.  Like  the  horned  cattle,  he  can 
tell  by  the  smell  of  it  in  the  air  the  near  presence 
of  water,  and  where,  glaring  in  the  sun,  you  can 
see  only  a  bare  kopje,  he  distinguishes  the  muzzle 
of  a  pompom,  the  crown  of  a  Boer  sombrero,  the 
levelled  barrel  of  a  Mauser.  He  is  the  Sherlock 
Holmes  of  all  out-of-doors. 

Besides  being  a  scout,  he  is  soldier,  hunter, 
mining  expert,  and  explorer.  Within  the  last  ten 
years  the  educated  instinct  that  as  a  younger  man 
taught  him  to  follow  the  trail  of  an  Indian,  or  the 
"spoor"  of  the  Kaffir  and  the  trek  wagon,  now 
leads  him  as  a  mining  expert  to  the  hiding-places 
of  copper,  silver,  and  gold,  and,  as  he  advises, 
great  and  wealthy  syndicates  buy  or  refuse  tracts 
of  land  in  Africa  and  Mexico  as  large  as  the  State 
of  New  York.  As  an  explorer  in  the  last  few  years 
in  the  course  of  his  expeditions  into  undiscovered 
lands,  he  has  added  to  this  little  world  many 
thousands  of  square  miles. 

Personally,  Burnham  is  as  unlike  the  scout  of 
fiction,  and  of  the  Wild  West  Show,  as  it  is  pos- 
sible for  a  man  to  be.  He  possesses  no  flowing 

193 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

locks,  his  talk  is  not  of  "greasers,"  "grizzly 
b'ars,"  or  "pesky  redskins."  In  fact,  because  he 
is  more  widely  and  more  thoroughly  informed,  he 
is  much  better  educated  than  many  who  have 
passed  through  one  of  the  "Big  Three"  univer- 
sities, and  his  English  is  as  conventional  as  though 
he  had  been  brought  up  on  the  borders  of  Boston 
Common,  rather  than  on  the  borders  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

In  appearance  he  is  slight,  muscular,  bronzed; 
with  a  finely  formed  square  jaw,  and  remarkable 
light  blue  eyes.  These  eyes  apparently  never 
leave  yours,  but  in  reality  they  see  everything 
behind  you  and  about  you,  above  and  below  you. 
They  tell  of  him  that  one  day,  while  out  with  a 
patrol  on  the  veldt,  he  said  he  had  lost  the  trail 
and,  dismounting,  began  moving  about  on  his 
hands  and  knees,  nosing  the  ground  like  a  blood- 
hound, and  pointing  out  a  trail  that  led  back 
over  the  way  the  force  had  just  marched.  When 
the  commanding  officer  rode  up,  Burnham  said: 

"Don't  raise  your  head,  sir.  On  that  kopje 
to  the  right  there  is  a  commando  of  Boers." 

"When  did  you  see  them  ?"   asked  the  officer. 

"I  see  them  now,"  Burnham  answered. 

"But  I  thought  you  were  looking  for  a  lost 
trail?" 

194 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

"That's  what  the  Boers  on  the  kopje  think," 
said  Burnham. 

In  his  eyes,  possibly,  owing  to  the  uses  to 
which  they  have  been  trained,  the  pupils,  as  in 
the  eyes  of  animals  that  see  in  the  dark,  are  ex- 
tremely small.  Even  in  the  photographs  that  ac- 
company this  article  this  feature  of  his  eyes  is 
obvious,  and  that  he  can  see  in  the  dark  the 
Kaffirs  of  South  Africa  firmly  believe.  In  man- 
ner he  is  quiet,  courteous,  talking  slowly  but  well, 
and,  while  without  any  of  that  shyness  that  comes 
from  self-consciousness,  extremely  modest.  In- 
deed, there  could  be  no  better  proof  of  his  modesty 
than  the  difficulties  I  have  encountered  in  gather- 
ing material  for  this  article,  which  I  have  been 
five  years  in  collecting.  And  even  now,  as  he 
reads  it  by  his  camp-fire,  I  can  see  him  squirm 
with  embarrassment. 

Burnham's  father  was  a  pioneer  missionary  in 
a  frontier  hamlet  called  Tivoli  on  the  edge  of  the 
Indian  reserve  of  Minnesota.  He  was  a  stern, 
severely  religious  man,  born  in  Kentucky,  but  edu- 
cated in  New  York,  where  he  graduated  from  the 
Union  Theological  Seminary.  He  was  wonder- 
fully skilled  in  wood-craft.  Burnham's  mother 
was  a  Miss  Rebecca  Russell  of  a  well-known  family 
in  Iowa.  She  was  a  woman  of  great  courage, 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

which,  in  those  days  on  that  skirmish  line  of  civili- 
zation, was  a  very  necessary  virtue;  and  she  was 
possessed  of  a  most  gentle  and  sweet  disposition. 
That  was  her  gift  to  her  son  Fred,  who  was  born 
on  May  11,  1861. 

His  education  as  a  child  consisted  in  memo- 
rizing many  verses  of  the  Bible,  the  "Three  R's," 
and  wood-craft.  His  childhood  was  strenuous. 
In  his  mother's  arms  he  saw  the  burning  of  the 
town  of  New  Ulm,  which  was  the  funeral  pyre 
for  the  women  and  children  of  that  place  when 
they  were  massacred  by  Red  Cloud  and  his  braves. 

On  another  occasion  Fred's  mother  fled  for  her 
life  from  the  Indians,  carrying  the  boy  with  her. 
He  was  a  husky  lad,  and  knowing  that  if  she  tried 
to  carry  him  farther  they  both  would  be  over- 
taken, she  hid  him  under  a  shock  of  corn.  There, 
the  next  morning,  the  Indians  having  been  driven 
off,  she  found  her  son  sleeping  as  soundly  as  a 
night  watchman.  In  these  Indian  wars,  and  the 
Civil  War  which  followed,  of  the  families  of  Burn- 
ham  and  Russell,  twenty-two  of  the  men  were 
killed.  There  is  no  question  that  Burnham 
comes  of  fighting  stock. 

In  1870,  when  Fred  was  nine  years  old,  his 
father  moved  to  Los  Angeles,  Cal.,  where  two 
years  later  he  died;  and  for  a  time  for  both  mother 

196 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

and  boy  there  was  poverty,  hard  and  grinding. 
To  relieve  this  young  Burnham  acted  as  a  mounted 
messenger.  Often  he  was  in  the  saddle  from 
twelve  to  fifteen  hours,  and  even  in  a  land  where 
every  one  rode  well,  he  gained  local  fame  as  a 
hard  rider.  In  a  few  years  a  kind  uncle  offered 
to  Mrs.  Burnham  and  a  younger  brother  a  home 
in  the  East,  but  at  the  last  moment  Fred  refused 
to  go  with  them,  and  chose  to  make  his  own  way. 
He  was  then  thirteen  years  old,  and  he  had  de- 
termined to  be  a  scout. 

At  that  particular  age  many  boys  have  set  forth 
determined  to  be  scouts,  and  are  generally  brought 
home  the  next  morning  by  a  policeman.  But 
Burnham,  having  turned  his  back  on  the  cities, 
did  not  repent.  He  wandered  over  Mexico,  Ari- 
zona, California.  He  met  Indians,  bandits,  pro- 
spectors, hunters  of  all  kinds  of  big  game;  and 
finally  a  scout  who,  under  General  Taylor,  had 
served  in  the  Mexican  War.  This  man  took  a 
liking  to  the  boy;  and  his  influence  upon  him  was 
marked  and  for  his  good.  He  was  an  educated 
man,  and  had  carried  into  the  wilderness  a  few 
books.  In  the  cabin  of  this  man  Burnham  read 
"The  Conquest  of  Mexico  and  Peru"  by  Pres- 
cott,  the  lives  of  Hannibal  and  Cyrus  the  Great, 
of  Livingstone  the  explorer,  which  first  set  his 

197 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

thoughts  toward  Africa,  and  many  technical  works 
on  the  strategy  and  tactics  of  war.  He  had  no 
experience  of  military  operations  on  a  large  scale, 
but,  with  the  aid  of  the  veteran  of  the  Mexican 
War,  with  corn-cobs  in  the  sand  in  front  of  the 
cabin  door,  he  constructed  forts  and  made  trenches, 
redoubts,  and  traverses.  In  Burnham's  life  this 
seems  to  have  been  a  very  happy  period.  The 
big  game  he  hunted  and  killed  he  sold  for  a  few 
dollars  to  the  men  of  Nadean's  freight  outfits, 
which  in  those  days  hauled  bullion  from  Cerro 
Gordo  for  the  man  who  is  now  Senator  Jones  of 
Nevada. 

At  nineteen  Burnham  decided  that  there  were 
things  in  this  world  he  should  know  that  could 
not  be  gleaned  from  the  earth,  trees,  and  sky; 
and  with  the  few  dollars  he  had  saved  he  came 
East.  The  visit  apparently  was  not  a  success. 
The  atmosphere  of  the  town  in  which  he  went  to 
school  was  strictly  Puritanical,  and  the  towns- 
people much  given  to  religious  discussion.  The 
son  of  the  pioneer  missionary  found  himself  un- 
able to  subscribe  to  the  formulas  which  to  the 
others  seemed  so  essential,  and  he  returned  to 
the  West  with  the  most  bitter  feelings,  which 
lasted  until  he  was  twenty-one. 

"It  seems  strange  now,"  he  once  said  to  me, 
198 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

"but  in  those  times  religious  questions  were  as 
much  a  part  of  our  daily  life  as  to-day  are  auto- 
mobiles, the  Standard  Oil,  and  the  insurance 
scandals,  and  when  I  went  West  I  was  in  an  un- 
happy, doubting  frame  of  mind.  The  trouble  was 
I  had  no  moral  anchors;  the  old  ones  father  had 
given  me  were  gone,  and  the  time  for  acquiring 
new  ones  had  not  arrived."  This  bitterness  of 
heart,  or  this  disappointment,  or  whatever  the 
state  of  mind  was  that  the  dogmas  of  the  New  Eng- 
land town  had  inspired  in  the  boy  from  the  prairie, 
made  him  reckless.  For  the  life  he  was  to  lead 
this  was  not  a  handicap.  Even  as  a  lad,  in  a  land- 
grant  war  in  California,  he  had  been  under  gun- 
fire, and  for  the  next  fifteen  years  he  led  a  life  of 
danger  and  of  daring;  and  studied  in  a  school  of 
experience  than  which,  for  a  scout,  if  his  life  be 
spared,  there  can  be  none  better.  Burnham  came 
out  of  it  a  quiet,  manly,  gentleman.  In  those 
fifteen  years  he  roved  the  West  from  the  Great 
Divide  to  Mexico.  He  fought  the  Apache  Ind- 
ians for  the  possession  of  waterholes,  he  guarded 
bullion  on  stage-coaches,  for  days  rode  in  pur- 
suit of  Mexican  bandits  and  American  horse- 
thieves,  took  part  in  county-seat  fights,  in  rustler 
wars,  in  cattle  wars;  he  was  cowboy,  miner, 
deputy-sheriff",  and  in  time  throughout  the  West 

199 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

the  name  of  "Fred"  Burnham  became  signifi- 
cant and  familiar. 

During  this  period  Burnham  was  true  to  his 
boyhood  ideal  of  becoming  a  scout.  It  was  not 
enough  that  by  merely  living  the  life  around  him 
he  was  being  educated  for  it.  He  daily  practised 
and  rehearsed  those  things  which  some  day  might 
mean  to  himself  and  others  the  difference  between 
life  and  death.  To  improve  his  sense  of  smell  he 
gave  up  smoking,  of  which  he  was  extremely  fond, 
nor,  for  the  same  reason,  does  he  to  this  day  use 
tobacco.  He  accustomed  himself  also  to  go  with 
little  sleep,  and  to  subsist  on  the  least  possible 
quantity  of  food.  As  a  deputy-sheriff  this  edu- 
cated faculty  of  not  requiring  sleep  aided  him  in 
many  important  captures.  Sometimes  he  would 
not  strike  the  trail  of  the  bandit  or  "bad  man" 
until  the  other  had  several  days  the  start  of  him. 
But  the  end  was  the  same;  for,  while  the  mur- 
derer snatched  a  few  hours'  rest  by  the  trail,  Burn- 
ham,  awake  and  in  the  saddle,  would  be  closing 
up  the  miles  between  them. 

That  he  is  a  good  marksman  goes  without 
telling.  At  the  age  of  eight  his  father  gave  him 
a  rifle  of  his  own,  and  at  twelve,  with  either  a 
"gun"  or  a  Winchester,  he  was  an  expert.  He 
taught  himself  to  use  a  weapon  either  in  his  left  or 

200 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

right  hand  and  to  shoot,  Indian  fashion,  hanging 
by  one  leg  from  his  pony  and  using  it  as  a  cover, 
and  to  turn  in  the  saddle  and  shoot  behind  him. 
I  once  asked  him  if  he  really  could  shoot  to  the 
rear  with  a  galloping  horse  under  him  and  hit  a 
man. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "maybe  not  to  hit  him,  but  I 
can  come  near  enough  to  him  to  make  him  de- 
cide my  pony's  so  much  faster  than  his  that  it 
really  isn't  worth  while  to  follow  me." 

Besides  perfecting  himself  in  what  he  toler- 
antly calls  "tricks"  of  horsemanship  and  marks- 
manship, he  studied  the  signs  of  the  trail,  forest 
and  prairie,  as  a  sailing-master  studies  the  waves 
and  clouds.  The  knowledge  he  gathers  from 
inanimate  objects  and  dumb  animals  seems  little 
less  than  miraculous.  And  when  you  ask  him 
how  he  knows  these  things  he  always  gives  you  a 
reason  founded  on  some  fact  or  habit  of  nature 
that  shows  him  to  be  a  naturalist,  mineralogist, 
geologist,  and  botanist,  and  not  merely  a  seventh 
son  of  a  seventh  son. 

In  South  Africa  he  would  say  to  the  officers: 
"There  are  a  dozen  Boers  five  miles  ahead  of 
us  riding  Basuto  ponies  at  a  trot,  and  leading 
five  others.  If  we  hurry  we  should  be  able  to 
sight  them  in  an  hour."  At  first  the  officers 

2OI 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

would  smile,  but  not  after  a  half-hour's  gallop, 
when  they  would  see  ahead  of  them  a  dozen  Boers 
leading  five  ponies.  In  the  early  days  of  Salem, 
Burnham  would  have  been  burned  as  a  witch. 

When  twenty-three  years  of  age  he  married  Miss 
Blanche  Blick,  of  Iowa.  They  had  known  each 
other  from  childhood,  and  her  brothers-in-law 
have  been  Burnham's  aids  and  companions  in 
every  part  of  Africa  and  the  West.  Neither  at 
the  time  of  their  marriage  nor  since  did  Mrs. 
Burnham  "lay  a  hand  on  the  bridle  rein,"  as  is 
witnessed  by  the  fact  that  for  nine  years  after  his 
marriage  Burnham  continued  his  career  as  sheriff, 
scout,  mining  prospector.  And  in  1893,  when 
Burnham  and  his  brother-in-law,  Ingram,  started 
for  South  Africa,  Mrs.  Burnham  went  with  them, 
and  in  every  part  of  South  Africa  shared  her  hus- 
band's life  of  travel  and  danger. 

In  making  this  move  across  the  sea,  Burn- 
ham's  original  idea  was  to  look  for  gold  in  the 
territory  owned  by  the  German  East  African 
Company.  But  as  in  Rhodesia  the  first  Matabele 
uprising  had  broken  out,  he  continued  on  down 
the  coast,  and  volunteered  for  that  campaign. 
This  was  the  real  beginning  of  his  fortunes.  The 
"war"  was  not  unlike  the  Indian  fighting  of  his 
early  days,  and  although  the  country  was  new  to 

202 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

him,  with  the  kind  of  warfare  then  being  waged 
between  the  Kaffirs  under  King  Lobengula  and 
the  white  settlers  of  the  British  South  Africa  Com- 
pany, the  chartered  company  of  Cecil  Rhodes,  he 
was  intimately  familiar. 

It  does  not  take  big  men  long  to  recognize  other 
big  men,  and  Burnham's  remarkable  work  as  a 
scout  at  once  brought  him  to  the  notice  of  Rhodes 
and  Dr.  Jameson,  who  was  personally  conducting 
the  campaign.  The  war  was  their  own  private  war, 
and  to  them,  at  such  a  crisis  in  the  history  of  their 
settlement,  a  man  like  Burnham  was  invaluable. 

The  chief  incident  of  this  campaign,  the  fame 
of  which  rang  over  all  Great  Britain  and  her  colo- 
nies, was  the  gallant  but  hopeless  stand  made  by 
Major  Alan  Wilson  and  his  patrol  of  thirty-four 
men.  It  was  Burnham's  attempt  to  save  these 
men  that  made  him  known  from  Buluwayo  to 
Cape  Town. 

King  Lobengula  and  his  warriors  were  halted 
on  one  bank  of  the  Shangani  River,  and  on  the 
other  Major  Forbes,  with  a  picked  force  of  three 
hundred  men,  was  coming  up  in  pursuit.  Al- 
though at  the  moment  he  did  not  know  it,  he  also 
was  being  pursued  by  a  force  of  Matabeles,  who 
were  gradually  surrounding  him.  At  nightfall 
Major  Wilson  and  a  patrol  of  twelve  men,  with 

203 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

Burnham  and  his  brother-in-law,  Ingram,  acting 
as  scouts,  were  ordered  to  make  a  dash  into  the 
camp  of  Lobengula  and,  if  possible,  in  the  con- 
fusion of  their  sudden  attack,  and  under  cover 
of  a  terrific  thunder-storm  that  was  raging,  bring 
him  back  a  prisoner. 

With  the  king  in  their  hands  the  white  men 
believed  the  rebellion  would  collapse.  To  the 
number  of  three  thousand  the  Matabeles  were 
sleeping  in  a  succession  of  camps,  through  which 
the  fourteen  men  rode  at  a  gallop.  But  in  the 
darkness  it  was  difficult  to  distinguish  the  trek 
wagon  of  the  king,  and  by  the  time  they  found 
his  laager  the  Matabeles  from  the  other  camps 
through  which  they  had  ridden  had  given  the 
alarm.  Through  the  underbrush  from  every  side 
the  enemy,  armed  with  assegai  and  elephant  guns, 
charged  toward  them  and  spread  out  to  cut  off 
their  retreat. 

At  a  distance  of  about  seven  hundred  yards 
from  the  camps  there  was  a  giant  ant-hill,  and 
the  patrol  rode  toward  it.  By  the  aid  of  the 
lightning  flashes  they  made  their  way  through 
a  dripping  wood  and  over  soil  which  the  rain 
had  turned  into  thick  black  mud.  When  the 
party  drew  rein  at  the  ant-hill  it  was  found  that  of 
the  fourteen  three  were  missing.  As  the  official 

204 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

scout  of  the  patrol  and  the  only  one  who  could  see 
in  the  dark,  Wilson  ordered  Burnham  back  to 
find  them.  Burnham  said  he  could  do  so  only 
by  feeling  the  hoof-prints  in  the  mud  and  that  he 
would  like  some  one  with  him  to  lead  his  pony. 
Wilson  said  he  would  lead  it.  With  his  fingers 
Burnham  followed  the  trail  of  the  eleven  horses 
to  where,  at  right  angles,  the  hoof-prints  of  the 
three  others  separated  from  it,  and  so  came  upon 
the  three  men.  Still,  with  nothing  but  the  mud 
of  the  jungle  to  guide  him,  he  brought  them  back 
to  their  comrades.  It  was  this  feat  that  estab- 
lished his  reputation  among  British,  Boers,  and 
black  men  in  South  Africa. 

Throughout  the  night  the  men  of  the  patrol  lay 
in  the  mud  holding  the  reins  of  their  horses.  In 
the  jungle  about  them,  they  could  hear  the  enemy 
splashing  through  the  mud,  and  the  swishing 
sound  of  the  branches  as  they  swept  back  into 
place.  It  was  still  raining.  Just  before  the  dawn 
there  came  the  sounds  of  voices  and  the  welcome 
clatter  of  accoutrements.  The  men  of  the  patrol, 
believing  the  column  had  joined  them,  sprang  up 
rejoicing,  but  it  was  only  a  second  patrol,  under 
Captain  Borrow,  who  had  been  sent  forward  with 
twenty  men  as  re-enforcements.  They  had  come 
in  time  to  share  in  a  glorious  immortality.  No 

205 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

sooner  had  these  men  joined  than  the  Kaffirs 
began  the  attack;  and  the  white  men  at  once 
learned  that  they  were  trapped  in  a  complete 
circle  of  the  enemy.  Hidden  by  the  trees,  the 
Kaffirs  fired  point-blank,  and  in  a  very  little  time 
half  of  Wilson's  force  was  killed  or  wounded. 
As  the  horses  were  shot  down  the  men  used  them 
for  breastworks.  There  was  no  other  shelter. 
Wilson  called  Burnham  to  him  and  told  him  he 
must  try  and  get  through  the  lines  of  the  enemy 
to  Forbes. 

"Tell  him  to  come  up  at  once,"  he  said;  "we 
are  nearly  finished."  He  detailed  a  trooper  named 
Gooding  and  Ingram  to  accompany  Burnham. 
"One  of  you  may  get  through,"  he  said.  Good- 
ing  was  but  lately  out  from  London,  and  knew 
nothing  of  scouting,  so  Burnham  and  Ingram 
warned  him,  whether  he  saw  the  reason  for  it  or 
not,  to  act  exactly  as  they  did.  The  three  men 
had  barely  left  the  others  before  the  enemy  sprang 
at  them  with  their  spears.  In  five  minutes  they 
were  being  fired  at  from  every  bush.  Then  fol- 
lowed a  remarkable  ride,  in  which  Burnham  called 
to  his  aid  all  he  had  learned  in  thirty  years  of  bor- 
der warfare.  As  the  enemy  rushed  after  them, 
the  three  doubled  on  their  tracks,  rode  in  triple 
loops,  hid  in  dongas  to  breathe  their  horses;  and 

206 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

to  scatter  their  pursuers,  separated,  joined  again, 
and  again  separated.  The  enemy  followed  them 
to  the  very  bank  of  the  river,  where,  finding  the 
"drift"  covered  with  the  swollen  waters,  they  were 
forced  to  swim.  They  reached  the  other  bank 
only  to  find  Forbes  hotly  engaged  with  another 
force  of  the  Matabeles. 

"I  have  been  sent  for  re-enforcements,"  Burn- 
ham  said  to  Forbes,  "but  I  believe  we  are  the  only 
survivors  of  that  party."  Forbes  himself  was  too 
hard  pressed  to  give  help  to  Wilson,  and  Burnham, 
his  errand  over,  took  his  place  in  the  column,  and 
began  firing  upon  the  new  enemy. 

Six  weeks  later  the  bodies  of  Wilson's  patrol 
were  found  lying  in  a  circle.  Each  of  them  had 
been  shot  many  times.  A  son  of  Lobengula, 
who  witnessed  their  extermination,  and  who  in 
Buluwayo  had  often  heard  the  Englishmen  sing 
their  national  anthem,  told  how  the  five  men  who 
were  the  last  to  die  stood  up  and,  swinging  their 
hats  defiantly,  sang  "God  Save  the  Queen." 
The  incident  will  long  be  recorded  in  song  and 
story;  and  in  London  was  reproduced  in  two 
theatres,  in  each  of  which  the  man  who  played 
"Burnham,  the  American  Scout,"  as  he  rode  off 
for  re-enforcements,  was  as  loudly  cheered  by  those 
in  the  audience  as  by  those  on  the  stage. 

207 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

Hensman,  in  his  "History  of  Rhodesia,"  says: 
"One  hardly  knows  which  to  most  admire,  the 
men  who  went  on  this  dangerous  errand,  through 
brush  swarming  with  natives,  or  those  who  re- 
mained behind  battling  against  overwhelming 
odds." 

For  his  help  in  this  war  the  Chartered  Com- 
pany presented  Burnham  with  the  campaign 
medal,  a  gold  watch  engraved  with  words  of 
appreciation;  and  at  the  suggestion  of  Cecil 
Rhodes  gave  him,  Ingram,  and  the  Hon.  Maurice 
Clifford,  jointly,  a  tract  of  land  of  three  hundred 
square  acres. 

After  this  campaign  Burnham  led  an  expedi- 
tion of  ten  white  men  and  seventy  Kaffirs  north 
of  the  Zambesi  River  to  explore  Barotzeland  and 
other  regions  to  the  north  of  Mashonaland,  and 
to  establish  the  boundaries  of  the  concession  given 
him,  Ingram,  and  Clifford. 

In  order  to  protect  Burnham  on  the  march 
the  Chartered  Company  signed  a  treaty  with 
the  native  king  of  the  country  through  which 
he  wished  to  travel,  by  which  the  king  gave  him 
permission  to  pass  freely  and  guaranteed  him 
against  attack. 

But  Latea,  the  son  of  the  king,  refused  to  recog- 
nize the  treaty  and  sent  his  young  men  in  great 

208 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

number  to  surround  Burnham's  camp.  Burnham 
had  been  instructed  to  avoid  a  fight,  and  was 
torn  between  his  desire  to  obey  the  Chartered 
Company  and  to  prevent  a  massacre.  He  de- 
cided to  make  it  a  sacrifice  either  of  himself  or  of 
Latea.  As  soon  as  night  fell,  with  only  three 
companions  and  a  missionary  to  act  as  a  witness 
of  what  occurred,  he  slipped  through  the  lines  of 
Latea' s  men,  and,  kicking  down  the  fence  around 
the  prince's  hut,  suddenly  appeared  before  him 
and  covered  him  with  his  rifle. 

"Is  it  peace  or  war?"  Burnham  asked.  "I 
have  the  king  your  father's  guarantee  of  protec- 
tion, but  your  men  surround  us.  I  have  told  my 
people  if  they  hear  shots  to  open  fire.  We  may 
all  be  killed,  but  you  will  be  the  first  to  die." 

The  missionary  also  spoke  urging  Latea  to 
abide  by  the  treaty.  Burnham  says  the  prince 
seemed  much  more  impressed  by  the  arguments 
of  the  missionary  than  by  the  fact  that  he  still 
was  covered  by  Burnham's  rifle.  Whichever  ar- 
gument moved  him,  he  called  off  his  warriors. 
On  this  expedition  Burnham  discovered  the  ruins 
of  great  granite  structures  fifteen  feet  wide,  and 
made  entirely  without  mortar.  They  were  of  a 
period  dating  before  the  Phoenicians.  He  also 
sought  out  the  ruins  described  to  him  by  F.  C. 

209 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

Selous,  the  famous  hunter,  and  by  Rider  Haggard 
as  King  Solomon's  Mines.  Much  to  the  delight 
of  Mr.  Haggard,  he  brought  back  for  him  from 
the  mines  of  his  imagination  real  gold  ornaments 
and  a  real  gold  bar. 

On  this  same  expedition,  which  lasted  five 
months,  Burnham  endured  one  of  the  severest 
hardships  of  his  life.  Alone  with  ten  Kaffir  boys, 
he  started  on  a  week's  journey  across  the  dried-up 
basin  of  what  once  had  been  a  great  lake.  Water 
was  carried  in  goat-skins  on  the  heads  of  the 
bearers.  The  boys,  finding  the  bags  an  un- 
wieldy burden,  and  believing,  with  the  happy 
optimism  of  their  race,  that  Burnham's  warnings 
were  needless,  and  that  at  a  stream  they  soon 
could  refill  the  bags,  emptied  the  water  on  the 
ground. 

The  tortures  that  followed  this  wanton  waste 
were  terrible.  Five  of  the  boys  died,  and  after 
several  days,  when  Burnham  found  water  in  abun- 
dance, the  tongues  of  the  others  were  so  swollen 
that  their  jaws  could  not  meet. 

On  this  trip  Burnham  passed  through  a  region 
ravaged  by  the  "sleeping  sickness,"  where  his 
nostrils  were  never  free  from  the  stench  of  dead 
bodies,  where  in  some  of  the  villages,  as  he  ex- 
pressed it,  "the  hyenas  were  mangy  with  over- 

210 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

eating,  and  the  buzzards  so  gorged  they  could  not 
move  out  of  our  way/'  From  this  expedition  he 
brought  back  many  ornaments  of  gold  manufac- 
tured before  the  Christian  era,  and  made  several 
valuable  maps  of  hitherto  uncharted  regions.  It 
was  in  recognition  of  the  information  gathered  by 
him  on  this  trip  that  he  was  elected  a  Fellow  of 
the  Royal  Geographical  Society. 

He  returned  to  Rhodesia  in  time  to  take  part 
in  the  second  Matabele  rebellion.  This  was  in 
1896.  By  now  Burnham  was  a  very  prominent 
member  of  the  "vortrekers"  and  pioneers  at  Bu- 
luwayo,  and  Sir  Frederick  Carrington,  who  was  in 
command  of  the  forces,  attached  him  to  his  staff. 
This  second  outbreak  was  a  more  serious  upris- 
ing than  the  one  of  1893,  and  as  it  was  evident 
the  forces  of  the  Chartered  Company  could  not 
handle  it,  imperial  troops  were  sent  to  assist  them. 
But  with  even  their  aid  the  war  dragged  on  until 
it  threatened  to  last  to  the  rainy  season,  when  the 
troops  must  have  gone  into  winter  quarters.  Had 
they  done  so,  the  cost  of  keeping  them  would 
have  fallen  on  the  Chartered  Company,  already  a 
sufferer  in  pocket  from  the  ravages  of  the  rinder- 
pest and  the  expenses  of  the  investigation  which 
followed  the  Jameson  raid. 

Accordingly,  Carrington  looked  about  for  some 

211 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

measure  by  which  he  could  bring  the  war  to  an 
immediate  end. 

It  was  suggested  to  him  by  a  young  Colonial, 
named  Armstrong,  the  Commissioner  of  the  dis- 
trict, that  this  could  be  done  by  destroying  the 
"god,"  or  high  priest,  Umlimo,  who  was  the  chief 
inspiration  of  the  rebellion. 

This  high  priest  had  incited  the  rebels  to  a  gen- 
eral massacre  of  women  and  children,  and  had 
given  them  confidence  by  promising  to  strike  the 
white  soldiers  blind  and  to  turn  their  bullets  into 
water.  Armstrong  had  discovered  the  secret 
hiding-place  of  Umlimo,  and  Carrington  ordered 
Burnham  to  penetrate  the  enemy's  lines,  find  the 
god,  capture  him,  and  if  that  were  not  possible 
to  destroy  him. 

The  adventure  was  a  most  desperate  one.  Um- 
limo was  secreted  in  a  cave  on  the  top  of  a  huge 
kopje.  At  the  base  of  this  was  a  village  where 
were  gathered  two  regiments,  of  a  thousand  men 
each,  of  his  fighting  men. 

For  miles  around  this  village  the  country  was 
patrolled  by  roving  bands  of  the  enemy. 

Against  a  white  man  reaching  the  cave  and  re- 
turning, the  chances  were  a  hundred  to  one,  and 
the  difficulties  of  the  journey  are  illustrated  by  the 
fact  that  Burnham  and  Armstrong  were  unable  to 

212 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

move  faster  than  at  the  rate  of  a  mile  an  hour. 
In  making  the  last  mile  they  consumed  three 
hours.  When  they  reached  the  base  of  the  kopje 
in  which  Umlimo  was  hiding,  they  concealed  their 
ponies  in  a  clump  of  bushes,  and  on  hands  and 
knees  began  the  ascent. 

Directly  below  them  lay  the  village,  so  close 
that  they  could  smell  the  odors  of  cooking  from 
the  huts,  and  hear,  rising  drowsily  on  the  hot, 
noonday  air,  voices  of  the  warriors.  For  minutes 
at  a  time  they  lay  as  motionless  as  the  granite 
bowlders  around  or  squirmed  and  crawled  over 
loose  stones  which  a  miss  of  hand  or  knee  would 
have  dislodged  and  sent  clattering  into  the  village. 
After  an  hour  of  this  tortuous  climbing  the  cave 
suddenly  opened  before  them,  and  they  beheld 
Umlimo.  Burnham  recognized  that  to  take  him 
alive  from  his  stronghold  was  an  impossibility, 
and  that  even  they  themselves  would  leave  the 
place  was  equally  doubtful.  So,  obeying  orders, 
he  fired,  killing  the  man  who  had  boasted  he 
would  turn  the  bullets  of  his  enemies  into  water. 
The  echo  of  the  shot  aroused  the  village  as  would 
a  stone  hurled  into  an  ant-heap.  In  an  instant 
the  veldt  below  was  black  with  running  men,  and 
as,  concealment  being  no  longer  possible,  the 
white  men  rose  to  fly  a  great  shout  of  anger  told 

213 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

them  they  were  discovered.  At  the  same  mo- 
ment two  women,  returning  from  a  stream  where 
they  had  gone  for  water,  saw  the  ponies,  and  ran 
screaming  to  give  the  alarm.  The  race  that  fol- 
lowed lasted  two  hours,  for  so  quickly  did  the 
Kaffirs  spread  out  on  every  side  that  it  was  im- 
possible for  Burnham  to  gain  ground  in  any  one 
direction,  and  he  was  forced  to  dodge,  turn,  and 
double.  At  one  time  the  white  men  were  driven 
back  to  the  very  kopje  from  which  the  race  had 
started. 

But  in  the  end  they  evaded  assegai  and  gun- 
fire, and  in  safety  reached  Buluwayo.  This  ex- 
ploit was  one  of  the  chief  factors  in  bringing  the 
war  to  a  close.  The  Matabeles,  finding  their 
leader  was  only  a  mortal  like  themselves,  and  so 
could  not,  as  he  had  promised,  bring  miracles  to 
their  aid,  lost  heart,  and  when  Cecil  Rhodes  in 
person  made  overtures  of  peace,  his  terms  were 
accepted.  During  the  hard  days  of  the  siege, 
when  rations  were  few  and  bad,  Burnham's  little 
girl,  who  had  been  the  first  white  child  born  in 
Buluwayo,  died  of  fever  and  lack  of  proper  food. 
This  with  other  causes  led  him  to  leave  Rhodesia 
and  return  to  California.  It  is  possible  he  then 
thought  he  had  forever  turned  his  back  on  South 
Africa,  but,  though  he  himself  had  departed,  the 

214 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

impression  he  had  made  there  remained  behind 
him. 

Burnham  did  not  rest  long  in  California.  In 
Alaska  the  hunt  for  gold  had  just  begun,  and,  the 
old  restlessness  seizing  him,  he  left  Pasadena  and 
her  blue  skies,  tropical  plants,  and  trolley-cai 
strikes  for  the  new  raw  land  of  the  Klondike. 

With  Burnham  it  has  always  been  the  place 
that  is  being  made,  not  the  place  in  being,  that 
attracts.  He  has  helped  to  make  straight  the 
ways  of  several  great  communities — Arizona,  Cal- 
ifornia, Rhodesia,  Alaska,  and  Uganda.  As  he 
once  said:  "It  is  the  constructive  side  of  frontier 
life  that  most  appeals  to  me,  the  building  up  of 
a  country,  where  you  see  the  persistent  drive  and 
force  of  the  white  man;  when  the  place  is  finally 
settled  I  don't  seem  to  enjoy  it  very  long." 

In  Alaska  he  did  much  prospecting,  and,  with 
a  sled  and  only  two  dogs,  for  twenty-four  days 
made  one  long  fight  against  snow  and  ice,  cover- 
ing six  hundred  miles.  In  mining  in  Alaska  he 
succeeded  well,  but  against  the  country  he  holds 
a  constant  grudge,  because  it  kept  him  out  of  the 
fight  with  Spain.  When  war  was  declared  he  was 
in  the  wilds  and  knew  nothing  of  it,  and  though 
on  his  return  to  civilization  he  telegraphed  Colo- 
nel Roosevelt  volunteering  for  the  Rough  Riders, 

215 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

and  at  once  started  south,  by  the  time  he  had 
reached  Seattle  the  war  was  over. 

Several  times  has  he  spoken  to  me  of  how  bit- 
terly he  regretted  missing  this  chance  to  officially 
fight  for  his  country.  That  he  had  twice  served 
with  English  forces  made  him  the  more  keen  to 
show  his  loyalty  to  his  own  people. 

That  he  would  have  been  given  a  commission  in 
the  Rough  Riders  seems  evident  from  the  opinion 
President  Roosevelt  has  publicly  expressed  of  him. 

"I  know  Burnham,"  the  President  wrote  in 
1901.  "He  is  a  scout  and  a  hunter  of  courage 
and  ability,  a  man  totally  without  fear,  a  sure 
shot,  and  a  fighter.  He  is  the  ideal  scout,  and 
when  enlisted  in  the  military  service  of  any  coun- 
try he  is  bound  to  be  of  the  greatest  benefit." 

The  truth  of  this  Burnham  was  soon  to  prove. 

In  1899  he  had  returned  to  the  Klondike,  and 
in  January  of  1900  had  been  six  months  in  Skag- 
way.  In  that  same  month  Lord  Roberts  sailed 
for  Cape  Town  to  take  command  of  the  army, 
and  with  him  on  his  staff  was  Burnham's  former 
commander,  Sir  Frederick,  now  Lord,  Carring- 
ton.  One  night  as  the  ship  was  in  the  Bay  of 
Biscay,  Carrington  was  talking  of  Burnham  and 
giving  instances  of  his  marvellous  powers  as  a 
"tracker." 

216 


Major  Burnnam,  Chief  of  Scouts 

"He  is  the  best  scout  we  ever  had  in  South 
Africa!"  Carrington  declared. 

'Then  why  don't  we  get  him  back  there?" 
said  Roberts. 

What  followed  is  well  known. 

From  Gibraltar  a  cable  was  sent  to  Skagway, 
offering  Burnham  the  position,  created  especially 
for  him,  of  chief  of  scouts  of  the  British  army  in 
the  field. 

Probably  never  before  in  the  history  of  wars 
has  one  nation  paid  so  pleasant  a  tribute  to  the 
abilities  of  a  man  of  another  nation. 

The  sequel  is  interesting.  The  cablegram 
reached  Skagway  by  the  steamer  City  of  Seattle. 
The  purser  left  it  at  the  post-office,  and  until  two 
hours  and  a  half  before  the  steamer  was  listed  to 
start  on  her  return  trip,  there  it  lay.  Then  Burn- 
ham,  in  asking  for  his  mail,  received  it.  In  two 
hours  and  a  half  he  had  his  family,  himself,  and 
his  belongings  on  board  the  steamer,  and  had 
started  on  his  half-around-the-world  journey  from 
Alaska  to  Cape  Town. 

A  Skagway  paper  of  January  5,  1900,  pub- 
lished the  day  after  Burnham  sailed,  throws  a 
side  light  on  his  character.  After  telling  of  his 
hasty  departure  the  day  before,  and  of  the  high 
compliment  that  had  been  paid  to  "a  prominent 

217 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

Skagwayan,"  it  adds:  "Although  Mr.  Burnham 
has  lived  in  Skagway  since  last  August,  and  has 
been  North  for  many  months,  he  has  said  little 
of  his  past,  and  few  have  known  that  he  is  the 
man  famous  over  the  world  as  'the  American 
scout*  of  the  Matabele  wars." 

Many  a  man  who  went  to  the  Klondike  did  not, 
for  reasons  best  known  to  himself,  talk  about 
his  past.  But  it  is  characteristic  of  Burnham  that, 
though  he  lived  there  two  years,  his  associates  did 
not  know,  until  the  British  Government  snatched 
him  from  among  them,  that  he  had  not  always 
been  a  prospector  like  themselves. 

I  was  on  the  same  ship  that  carried  Burnham 
the  latter  half  of  his  journey,  from  Southampton 
to  Cape  Town,  and  every  night  for  seventeen 
nights  was  one  of  a  group  of  men  who  shot 
questions  at  him.  And  it  was  interesting  to  see 
a  fellow-countryman  one  had  heard  praised  so 
highly  so  completely  make  good.  It  was  not  as 
though  he  had  a  credulous  audience  of  commer- 
cial tourists.  Among  the  officers  who  each  even- 
ing gathered  around  him  were  Colonel  Gallilet 
of  the  Egyptian  cavalry,  Captain  Frazer  com- 
manding the  Scotch  Gillies,  Captain  Mackie  of 
Lord  Roberts's  staff,  each  of  whom  was  later  killed 
in  action;  Colonel  Sir  Charles  Hunter  of  the 

218 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

Royal  Rifles,  Major  Bagot,  Major  Lord  Dudley, 
and  Captain  Lord  Valentia.  Each  of  these  had 
either  held  command  in  border  fights  in  India  or 
the  Sudan  or  had  hunted  big  game,  and  the  ques- 
tions each  asked  were  the  outcome  of  his  own 
experience  and  observation. 

Not  for  a  single  evening  could  a  faker  have 
submitted  to  the  midnight  examination  through 
which  they  put  Burnham  and  not  have  exposed 
his  ignorance.  They  wanted  to  know  what  dif- 
ference there  is  in  a  column  of  dust  raised  by 
cavalry  and  by  trek  wagons,  how  to  tell  whether 
a  horse  that  has  passed  was  going  at  a  trot  or  a 
gallop,  the  way  to  throw  a  diamond  hitch,  how 
to  make  a  fire  without  at  the  same  time  making 
a  target  of  yourself,  how — why — what — and  how  ? 

And  what  made  us  most  admire  Burnham  was 
that  when  he  did  not  know  he  at  once  said  so. 

Within  two  nights  he  had  us  so  absolutely  at 
his  mercy  that  we  would  have  followed  him  any- 
where; anything  he  chose  to  tell  us,  we  would 
have  accepted.  We  were  ready  to  believe  in  fly- 
ing foxes,  flying  squirrels,  that  wild  turkeys  dance 
quadrilles — even  that  you  must  never  sleep  in 
the  moonlight.  Had  he  demanded:  "Do  you 
believe  in  vampires?"  we  would  have  shouted 
"Yes."  To  ask  that  a  scout  should  on  an  ocean 

219 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

steamer  prove  his  ability  was  certainly  placing 
him  under  a  severe  handicap. 

As  one  of  the  British  officers  said:  "It's  about 
as  fair  a  game  as  though  we  planted  the  captain 
of  this  ship  in  the  Sahara  Desert,  and  told  him  to 
prove  he  could  run  a  ten-thousand-ton  liner/* 

Burnham  continued  with  Lord  Roberts  to  the 
fall  of  Pretoria,  when  he  was  invalided  home. 

During  the  advance  north  he  was  a  hundred 
times  inside  the  Boer  laagers,  keeping  Headquar- 
ters Staff  daily  informed  of  the  enemy's  move- 
ments; was  twice  captured  and  twice  escaped. 

He  was  first  captured  while  trying  to  warn  the 
British  from  the  fatal  drift  at  Thaba'nchu.  When 
reconnoitring  alone  in  the  morning  mist  he  came 
upon  the  Boers  hiding  on  the  banks  of  the  river, 
toward  which  the  English  were  even  then  advanc- 
ing. The  Boers  were  moving  all  about  him,  and 
cut  him  off  from  his  own  side.  He  had  to  choose 
between  abandoning  the  English  to  the  trap  or 
signalling  to  them,  and  so  exposing  himself  to 
capture.  With  the  red  kerchief  the  scouts  carried 
for  that  purpose  he  wigwagged  to  the  approach- 
ing soldiers  to  turn  back,  that  the  enemy  were 
awaiting  them.  But  the  column,  which  was  with- 
out an  advance  guard,  paid  no  attention  to  his 
signals  and  plodded  steadily  on  into  the  ambush, 

27O 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

while  Burnham  was  at  once  made  prisoner.  In 
the  fight  that  followed  he  pretended  to  receive  a 
wound  in  the  knee  and  bound  it  so  elaborately 
that  not  even  a  surgeon  would  have  disturbed 
the  carefully  arranged  bandages.  Limping  heav- 
ily and  groaning  with  pain,  he  was  placed  in 
a  trek  wagon  with  the  officers  who  really  were 
wounded,  and  who,  in  consequence,  were  not 
closely  guarded.  Burnham  told  them  who  he  was 
and,  as  he  intended  to  escape,  offered  to  take  back 
to  head-quarters  their  names  or  any  messages  they 
might  wish  to  send  to  their  people.  As  twenty 
yards  behind  the  wagon  in  which  they  lay  was 
a  mounted  guard,  the  officers  told  him  escape 
was  impossible.  He  proved  otherwise.  The  trek 
wagon  was  drawn  by  sixteen  oxen  and  driven  by 
a  Kaffir  boy.  Later  in  the  evening,  but  while  it 
still  was  moonlight,  the  boy  descended  from  his 
seat  and  ran  forward  to  belabor  the  first  spans  of 
oxen.  This  was  the  opportunity  for  which  Burn- 
ham  had  been  waiting. 

Slipping  quickly  over  the  driver's  seat,  he 
dropped  between  the  two  "wheelers"  to  the  dis- 
selboom,  or  tongue,  of  the  trek  wagon.  From 
this  he  lowered  himself  and  fell  between  the  legs 
of  the  oxen  on  his  back  in  the  road.  In  an  in- 
stant the  body  of  the  wagon  had  passed  over  him, 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

and  while  the  dust  still  hung  above  the  trail  he 
rolled  rapidly  over  into  the  ditch  at  the  side  of  the 
road  and  lay  motionless. 

It  was  four  days  before  he  was  able  to  re-enter 
the  British  lines,  during  which  time  he  had  been 
lying  in  the  open  veldt,  and  had  subsisted  on  one 
biscuit  and  two  handfuls  of  "mealies,"  or  what 
we  call  Indian  corn. 

Another  time  when  out  scouting  he  and  his 
Kaffir  boy  while  on  foot  were  "jumped"  by  a 
Boer  commando  and  forced  to  hide  in  two  great 
ant-hills.  The  Boers  went  into  camp  on  every 
side  of  them,  and  for  two  days,  unknown  to  them- 
selves, held  Burnham  a  prisoner.  Only  at  night 
did  he  and  the  Cape  boy  dare  to  crawl  out  to 
breathe  fresh  air  and  to  eat  the  food  tablets  they 
carried  in  their  pockets.  On  five  occasions  was 
Burnham  sent  into  the  Boer  lines  with  dynamite 
cartridges  to  blow  up  the  railroad  over  which  the 
enemy  was  receiving  supplies  and  ammunition. 
One  of  these  expeditions  nearly  ended  his  life. 

On  June  2,  1901,  while  trying  by  night  to  blow 
up  the  line  between  Pretoria  and  Delagoa  Bay, 
he  was  surrounded  by  a  party  of  Boers  and  could 
save  himself  only  by  instant  flight.  He  threw 
himself  Indian  fashion  along  the  back  of  his  pony, 
and  had  all  but  got  away  when  a  bullet  caught 


222 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

the  horse  and,  without  even  faltering  in  its  stride, 
it  crashed  to  the  ground  dead,  crushing  Burn- 
ham  beneath  it  and  knocking  him  senseless.  He 
continued  unconscious  for  twenty-four  hours,  and 
when  he  came  to,  both  friends  and  foes  had  de- 
parted. Bent  upon  carrying  out  his  orders,  al- 
though suffering  the  most  acute  agony,  he  crept 
back  to  the  railroad  and  destroyed  it.  Knowing 
the  explosion  would  soon  bring  the  Boers,  on  his 
hands  and  knees  he  crept  to  an  empty  kraal,  where 
for  two  days  and  nights  he  lay  insensible.  At  the 
end  of  that  time  he  appreciated  that  he  was  sink- 
ing and  that  unless  he  found  aid  he  would  die. 

Accordingly,  still  on  his  hands  and  knees,  he 
set  forth  toward  the  sound  of  distant  firing.  He 
was  indifferent  as  to  whether  it  came  from  the 
enemy  or  his  own  people,  but,  as  it  chanced,  he 
was  picked  up  by  a  patrol  of  General  Dickson's 
Brigade,  who  carried  him  to  Pretoria.  There  the 
surgeons  discovered  that  in  his  fall  he  had  torn 
apart  the  muscles  of  the  stomach  and  burst  a 
blood-vessel.  That  his  life  was  saved,  so  they 
informed  him,  was  due  only  to  the  fact  that  for 
three  days  he  had  been  without  food.  Had  he 
attempted  to  digest  the  least  particle  of  the  "staff 
of  life  "  he  would  have  surely  died.  His  injuries 
were  so  serious  that  he  was  ordered  home. 

223 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

On  leaving  the  army  he  was  given  such  hearty 
thanks  and  generous  rewards  as  no  other  Ameri- 
can ever  received  from  the  British  War  Office. 
He  was  promoted  to  the  rank  of  major,  presented 
with  a  large  sum  of  money,  and  from  Lord  Rob- 
erts received  a  personal  letter  of  thanks  and  ap- 
preciation. 

In  part  the  Field-Marshal  wrote:  "I  doubt  if 
any  other  man  in  the  force  could  have  success- 
fully carried  out  the  thrilling  enterprises  in  which 
from  time  to  time  you  have  been  engaged,  de- 
manding as  they  did  the  training  of  a  lifetime, 
combined  with  exceptional  courage,  caution,  and 
powers  of  endurance."  On  his  arrival  in  England 
he  was  commanded  to  dine  with  the  Queen  and 
spend  the  night  at  Osborne,  and  a  few  months 
later,  after  her  death,  King  Edward  created  him 
a  member  of  the  Distinguished  Service  Order, 
and  personally  presented  him  with  the  South 
African  medal  with  five  bars,  and  the  cross  of  the 
D.  S.  O.  While  recovering  his  health  Burnham, 
with  Mrs.  Burnham,  was  "passed  on"  by  friends 
he  had  made  in  the  army  from  country  house  to 
country  house;  he  was  made  the  guest  of  honor 
at  city  banquets,  with  the  Duke  of  Rutland  rode 
after  the  Belvoir  hounds,  and  in  Scotland  made 
mild  excursions  after  grouse.  But  after  six 

224 


holograph  by  Elliott  &  Fry. 

Major   F.    R.    Burnham. 

Taken  on  the  day  the  King  decorated  him  with  the  D.S.O. 
(Distinguished  Service  Order). 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

months  of  convalescence  he  was  off  again,  this 
time  to  the  hinterland  of  Ashanti,  on  the  west 
coast  of  Africa,  where  he  went  in  the  interests  of 
^  syndicate  to  investigate  a  concession  for  work- 
ing gold  mines. 

With  his  brother-in-law,  J.  C.  Blick,  he  marched 
and  rowed  twelve  hundred  miles,  and  explored 
the  Volta  River,  at  that  date  so  little  visited  that 
in  one  day's  journey  they  counted  eleven  hip- 
popotamuses. In  July,  1901,  he  returned  from 
Ashanti,  and  a  few  months  later  an  unknown  but 
enthusiastic  admirer  asked  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons if  it  were  true  Major  Burnham  had  applied 
for  the  post  of  Instructor  of  Scouts  at  Aldershot. 
There  is  no  such  post,  and  Burnham  had  not  ap- 
plied for  any  other  post.  To  the  Times  he  wrote: 
"I  never  have  thought  myself  competent  to  teach 
Britons  how  to  fight,  or  to  act  as  an  instructor 
with  officers  who  have  fought  in  every  corner  of 
the  world.  The  question  asked  in  Parliament 
was  entirely  without  my  knowledge,  and  I  deeply 
regret  that  it  was  asked."  A  few  months  later, 
with  Mrs.  Burnham  and  his  younger  son,  Bruce, 
he  journeyed  to  East  Africa  as  director  of  the 
East  African  Syndicate. 

During  his  stay  there  the  African  Review  said 
of  him:  "Should  East  Africa  ever  become  a  pos- 

225 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

session  for  England  to  be  proud  of,  she  will  owe 
much  of  her  prosperity  to  the  brave  little  band 
that  has  faced  hardships  and  dangers  in  discover- 
ing her  hidden  resources.  Major  Burnham  has 
chosen  men  from  England,  Ireland,  the  United 
States,  and  South  Africa  for  sterling  qualities,  and 
they  have  justified  his  choice.  Not  the  least  like 
a  hero  is  the  retiring,  diffident  little  major  him- 
self, though  a  finer  man  for  a  friend  or  a  better 
man  to  serve  under  would  not  be  found  in  the 
five  continents." 

Burnham  explored  a  tract  of  land  larger  than 
Germany,  penetrating  a  thousand  miles  through  a 
country,  never  before  visited  by  white  men,  to 
the  borders  of  the  Congo  Basin.  With  him  he 
had  twenty  white  men  and  five  hundred  natives. 
The  most  interesting  result  of  the  expedition  was 
the  discovery  of  a  lake  forty-nine  miles  square, 
composed  almost  entirely  of  pure  carbonate  of 
soda,  forming  a  snowlike  crust  so  thick  that  on  it 
the  men  could  cross  the  lake. 

It  is  the  largest,  and  when  the  railroad  is  built 
—the  Uganda  Railroad  is  now  only  eighty-eight 
miles  distant — it  will  be  the  most  valuable  deposit 
of  carbonate  of  soda  ever  found. 

A  year  ago,  in  the  interests  of  John  Hays  Ham- 
mond, the  distinguished  mining  engineer  of  South 

226 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

Africa  and  this  country,  Burnham  went  to  Sonora, 
Mexico,  to  find  a  buried  city  and  to  open  up 
mines  of  copper  and  silver. 

Besides  seeking  for  mines,  Hammond  and  Burn- 
ham,  with  Gardner  Williams,  another  American 
who  also  made  his  fortune  in  South  Africa,  are 
working  together  on  a  scheme  to  import  to  this 
country  at  their  own  expense  many  species  of 
South  African  deer. 

The  South  African  deer  is  a  hardy  animal  and 
can  live  where  the  American  deer  cannot,  and 
the  idea  in  importing  him  is  to  prevent  big  game 
in  this  country  from  passing  away.  They  have 
asked  Congress  to  set  aside  for  these  animals  a 
portion  of  the  forest  reserve.  Already  Congress 
has  voted  toward  the  plan  $15,000,  and  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  is  one  of  its  most  enthusiastic  sup- 
porters. 

We  cannot  leave  Burnham  in  better  hands 
than  those  of  Hammond  and  Gardner  Williams. 
Than  these  three  men  the  United  States  has  not 
sent  to  British  Africa  any  Americans  of  whom  she 
has  better  reason  to  be  proud.  Such  men  abroad 
do  for  those  at  home  untold  good.  They  are  the 
real  ambassadors  of  their  country. 

The  last  I  learned  of  Burnham  is  told  in  the 

snapshot  of  him  which  accompanies  this  article, 

227 


Major  Burnham,  Chief  of  Scouts 

and  which  shows  him,  barefoot,  in  the  Yaqui 
River,  where  he  has  gone,  perhaps,  to  conceal  his 
trail  from  the  Indians.  It  came  a  month  ago  in 
a  letter  which  said  briefly  that  when  the  picture 
was  snapped  the  expedition  was  "trying  to  cool 
off."  There  his  narrative  ended.  Promising  as 
it  does  adventures  still  to  come,  it  seems  a  good 
place  in  which  to  leave  him. 

Meanwhile,  you  may  think  of  Mrs.  Burnham 
after  a  year  in  Mexico  keeping  the  house  open 
for  her  husband's  return  to  Pasadena,  and  of 
their  first  son,  Roderick,  studying  woodcraft  with 
his  father,  forestry  with  Gifford  Pinchot,  and 
playing  right  guard  on  the  freshman  team  at  the 
University  of  California. 

But  Burnham  himself  we  will  leave  "cooling 
off"  in  the  Yaqui  River,  maybe,  with  Indians 
hunting  for  him  along  the  banks.  And  we  need 
not  worry  about  him.  We  know  they  will  not 
catch  him. 


228 


CT 

105" 

D35" 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
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Series  9482 


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